
class 1) Cr 5*7 Q 



Book 



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SJje Spirit of Stalp 




Impressions and Observations of an 

■ 

American Newspaper Man During the Early 
Months of the War Against Austria 



BY 

WILLIAM J GUARD 
Author of "The Soul of Paris" 



PRICE, 50 CENTS 



/ 



W&t Spirit of 3talp 




3 7 ; 



Impressions and Observations of an 

American Newspaper Man During the Early 

Months of the War Against Austria 



BY 



WILLIAM J. GUARD 
Author of "The Soul of Paris" 



.0? 



To 

Italy's Royal Democrat 
Vittorio Emanuele III. 



■Jt 

A 



PREFACE. 

This book is composed of a series of letters writ- 
ten during the first three months after Italy's 
declaration of Avar against Austria. Nearly all of 
them have been printed in the New York Evening 
8un, among the exceptions being the letter relating 
to Louis Latapie's much-discussed interview with 
Pope Benedict XV. The letters are cursory and 
make pretension neither to style or profundity. 
However, quite a number of Italian friends and 
Americans, with a tender feeling for Italy, suggest- 
ed that I collect them in a more permanent form. 
They seemed to think that they threw some light 
on general conditions in Italy at the outbreak of the 
war, and in a measure voiced the spirit of the Ital- 
ian people, to whom the world owes so much, in 
these tragic hours. W. J. G. 



New York, November, 1915, 




From a photo taken June 9, 1915. 

'With St. Mark's Pigeons in Wartime. 



I. 



Milan During the First Two Weeks of Italy's War 
— How a National Holiday Was Observed — 
Urban Life as It Impressed a Stranger — The 
War a Popular Movement — Salandra, the Man 
of the Hour — The Cathedral's Changed Air. 



Milan, Sunday, June 6, 1915. 



ODAY is Italy's "Fourth of July"— the 
"Festa dello Statuto" — the statute be- 
ing the Constitution granted to his peo- 
ple by Carlo Alberto of Savoy, father of 
Victor Emmanuel II., in 1848. The holi- 
day is being observed in Milan in a man- 
ner that would delight the hearts of those advocates 
at home of a "safe and sane" Fourth. 

Contrary to custom, there were no parades, no 
review of troops during the daytime and no fire- 
works tonight. The streets this evening, to be sure, 
are crowded with men, women and children; a 
broad stream of humanity flows through the far- 
famed Galleria ; while the interior and exterior of 
the many bright cafes have every inch of space 
occupied by well-dressed folk (everybody in Milan 
seems to be well dressed today) eating ice cream or 
drinking most innocent-looking iced drinks, for it 



6 The Spirit of Italy 

has been real Coney Island weather in Lombardy's 
capital. 

To the stranger within the city's gates it is a 
cheerful and apparently carefree crowd. There is 
nothing exceptional in evidence to indicate an 
extraordinary state of affairs in the country. To 
be sure, there is a liberal display of the national 
colors, and here and there one also sees the flag of 
Great Britain or of France or of Russia, and there 
is a rather unusual number of men in military uni- 
forms; but as the uniforms all seem so natty and 
new, the day a holiday and Milan the headquarters 
of an army corps, even this fact might occasion no 
special comment. 

And yet just two weeks ago, when Italy entered 
the War of Nations Milan went wild with excite- 
ment, I am told, for I didn't arrive till seven days 
later. The great square in front of the wonderful 
Cathedral was packed until far into the night with 
a crowd shouting "Viva PItalia!" "Viva la 
Guerra!" and singing the Hymn of Garibaldi 
around the big equestrian statue of Victor Em- 
manuel II., which stands in the centre of the 
Piazza. 

Three days later there was another remarkable 
popular outburst. Reports had reached Milan of 
attacks on Italian residents in Berlin and Trieste, 
of the bombardment of the open town of Ancona on 



The Spirit of Italy 7 

the Adriatic and of an aeroplane visitation of 
Venice. Milan, too, had an attack of spy scare. It 
was said that discovery had been made of a system 
of signal lights around the Cathedral square which 
would have enabled an Austrian aviator to aim a 
bomb accurately at the world-famous edifice. It 
was also reported that a very fine Marconi outfit 
had been found concealed in the house of a promi- 
nent German business man. The feeling spread 
that the military and civil authorities were mud 
too lax in their efforts to discover and expel sus- 
picious characters. 

Wednesday afternoon the popular explosion 
occurred. Not having been present I refrain from 
giving a hearsay account. Suffice it to say, how- 
ever, that Milanese anti-German, anti-Austrian 
indignation gave itself free expression and that the 
reported destruction of the property of Italians 
and Italian sympathizers in Trieste, Berlin and 
anywhere else in Austria or Germany and the bom- 
bardment of Ancona were amply avenged! Nor 
did the avenging furies consist solely of Italians, 
for I happen to know of more than one American 
in Milan who helped light a bonfire in Cathedral 
Square and join in the Witches' Dance of that 
Walpurgis night. However, the law also had to be 
vindicated, and a few days later saw a complete 
change in the heads of the civil and military 
authorities in Milan, whom the government at 
Rome was rather glad to get rid of because of their 



8 The Spirit of Italy 

old political association with the discredited Gio- 
litti-Neutralist party. 

Since then life in this most modern of Italian 
cities— in many of its quarters as modern as New 
York's Fifth avenue or Riverside Drive (not to 
mention the Bronx)— has seemed as tranquil, 
undisturbed, and, I may say, commonplace, from 
the stranger's point of view, as though the whole 
world were at peace and the nations of Europe in a 
state of brotherly love. 

Before reaching Milan I spent nearly a day in 
Naples and a day and a half in Genoa. In both 
these cities there were the same surface indications 
of normal urban activity, always excepting the 
prevalence of military uniforms. My mind reverted 
to Paris that I remembered two weeks after the 
war began ten months ago — Paris, with its closed 
shops, streets daily more and more deserted, disap- 
pearance of the young men, cafes shut at eight 
o'clock, and the citv almost silent as a countrv 
town before midnight. Here in Milan, however — 
as I found in Naples and Genoa also — everything is 
wideawake till after midnight. No restrictions 
have been put on drinking places or restaurants, 
and the city is almost as brightly lighted at night 
as before Italy declared war. Very few shops have 
their shutters up. Most of those that have bear 
German names. And as for young men in civilian 



The Spirit of Italy 9 

clothes, why, there seem to be enough of them left 
to supply twice as many more men as Italy is said 
already to have under arms. 

This is how I was impressed until I had spent 
several days in Milan and had a chance of wander- 
ing around the city and thus getting in closer 
touch with the people. Then I began to realize that 
this apparently care-free air was only superficial. 
Each day I learned more and more; that Italy is 
thinking of nothing else but the war. Serious 
opposition to intervention there certainly was, 
principally on the part of certain large financial 
interests more or less allied with Germany — for in 
Milan, especially, German financial interests have 
been very powerful — and naturally those depend- 
ent on them. There also was a faction among the 
Socialists honestly opposed to war. 

Apart from these elements — so far as my in- 
quiries led me — I am thoroughly convinced that the 
vast majority of the people wanted the war and 
that the flaming announcements which were posted 
on the walls (many are still there) on the occasion 
of the Cabinet's resignation, calling for a demon- 
stration in favor of "War or a Republic," were no 
idle bluff. The friends of ex-Premier Giolitti, who 
went to Rome to exert his influence, so unsuccess- 
fully, in behalf of neutrality, had to keep him in 
close! hiding in Rome until they could spirit him 



10 The Spirit of Italy 

away from the city in the night time. Heaven 
knows ,what would have happened to him if the 
Populus Romanus, which was wrought up to fever 
heat in favor of intervention, had caught him. 
And yet Giolitti was supposed to control Parlia- 
ment as few American political bosses, let them 
have been Tom Piatt, Gorman or Quay, have 
ever controlled a State Legislature. Not so long 
ago he was the strongest man in the country; to- 
day he is the most widely detested. 

On the other hand, Salandra is the man of the 
hour. If there are any neutralists left in Italy 
after Salandra's memorable speech at the Cap- 
itol of Rome last week in reply to Bethmann-Holl- 
weg, they are lying very low and rivaling the 
oyster. As was the case with the advanced Social- 
ists in France, so with the corresponding party in 
Italy ; they have fallen in line and form a large per- 
centage of the hundreds of thousands of Italians 
who, though not called out, have offered themselves 
as volunteers. Salandra's speech justifying Italy's 
entry into war has met with the indorsement of 
every element, so far as I can judge from conversa- 
tions with Italians of various stations in life or 
political views, and those most competent to judge, 
tell me that from the standpoint of literature it is 
a classic which students of the language will do 
well to adopt as a text book. 



The Spirit of Italy 11 

Already every Italian knows the introductory 
sentences by heart. They are worth recording here 
as being the keynote of the discourse, and are as 
follows : 

"I address myself to Italy and the civilized world 
in order to show not by violent words but by exact 
facts and documents how the fury of our enemies 
has vainly attempted to diminish the high moral 
and political dignity of the cause which our army 
must make prevail. I speak with the calm of which 
the King of Italy has given a noble example when 
he called his land and sea forces to arms. I shall 
speak with the respect due to my position and to 
the place in which I speak. I can afford to ignore 
the insults written in Imperial, Royal and Arch- 
ducal proclamations. Since I speak from the Cap- 
itol and represent in this solemn hour the People 
and the Government of Italy, I, a simple citizen — 
uno modesto borghese — feel that I am far nobler 
than the head of the House of the Hapsburgs." 

^©^ ^s^ ^^r 

Another impression I have received is that the 
dominating motive of the war has been modified. 
"Italy Unredeemed !" used to be the cry that filled 
the air — "Trent and Trieste !" So, too, we heard at 
the outset of the war of nations in France, "Alsace 
and Lorraine !" But just as the recovery of "Alsace 
and Lorraine" has become for France a mere inci- 



12 The Spirit of Italy 

dent, so for Italy the "redemption" of Trent and 
Trieste also has become a side issue. 

That Italy always has hated Austria even the 
most superficially acquainted with the people must 
know. For Germany, however, in former years, 
there had been no special ill feeling. Even a week 
ago on my arrival here an Italian of high standing 
told me that he believed that the Italian Govern- 
ment had some sort of an understanding with t the 
Kaiser. Bethmann-Hollweg's virulent attack upon 
Italy soon dissipated any such delusion and at the 
same time crystallized the /growing anti-German 
animosity that began with the invasion of Belgium, 
was furthered by the bombardment of; the Cathe- 
dral of Rheims and was rapidly culminating upon 
the sinking of the Lusitania. 

Bethmann-Hollweg's speech "did the business." 
Today I find no distinction made between Aus- 
trians and Germans. If anything, the Italians are 
getting to hate the Germans more than they hate 
the Austrians, for they have been convinced that 
the victory of the central empires would mean the 
slavery of Italy to the Kaiser's Government. And 
whatever may be the defects L of government in 
Italy, its people is a liberty loving people, quite 
anti-militaristic in spirit — a real democracy where 
the King reigns, as the law says, by "the grace of 
God and the will of the Nation." 

While as yet Victor Emmanuel III. has not had 
the same opportunity for becoming a hero as that 



The Spirit of Italy 13 

other splendid constitutional monarch, King Al- 
bert of Belgium, he has again shown himself to be a 
real leader by turning over ordinary governmental 
affairs to his uncle and assuming the position of 
head of the army. Several times during the past 
week he has been on the firing line, where his sim- 
plicity of manner and genuinely human sympathy 
with his soldiers have an inspiring effect upon the 
men who are doing the fighting. Nor is he without 
a sense of humor, for on one occasion he was 
greeted so frequently and uproariously by the sol- 
diers with the cry "Viva il Re !" that he turned to 
his adjutant and friend, Lieutenant-General Brus- 
ati, and remarked: 

"That almost makes me feel like shouting 'Long 
live the King !' myself !" 

The apparently normal state of affairs in Milan, 
of course, is due to the factjthat so far the Italians 
have been fighting on the enemy's territory. It is 
a good many hours to the nearest point of hostili- 
ties, and then it is a war to a great extent in the 
mountains. None the sless all necessary precautions 
are being taken, especially against attacks of aero- 
planes and dirigibles. The Italian Aviation Corps 
are being Reinforced by French experts. A half 
dozen of the latter who had stopped off at Milan 
visited the Galleria the other evening. Recognized, 
they were surrounded by a crowd at once. An en- 



14: The Spirit of Italy 

thusiastic Franco-Italian demonstration was im- 
provised, and when the band in Biffi's restaurant 
struck up the "Marseillaise" there was a display of 
Latin emotion not easily forgotten. 

It is a possible attack on the Cathedral that 
seems to concern the j Milanese the most. There 
isn't a citizen who doesn't believe that nothing 
would give the Germans and Austrians more joy 
than to drop a few destructive^bombs on the archi- 
tectural masterpiece which is his city's pride and 
glory. 

Anyone who has visited Milan will remember the 
immense gilded statue of the Madonna — "the 
Madonina," they call it affectionately — that tops 
the central spire. Well, the Madonina is having a 
monster cloak of jgray made for her. When she 
dons it, though, she will seem more a Magdalene 
than a Madonna. She will be less a target for the 
enemy's bombs than she is at present. And, by the 
way, if you had strolled into the vast Cathedral 
with me this morning while service was going on, 
if you ever had visited ^t before, you would have 
wondered what strange thing had happened com- 
pletely to change the interior of the Duomo. Gone 
all the "dim religious light !" ', Gone all that haunt- 
ing, impressive air of mystery! The explanation? 
The stained glass has been removed from the win- 
dows, piece by piece, a most delicate and painstak- 
ing work, as you may imagine — all removed from 
the windows where they have been transmuting the 



The Spirit of Italy 15 

common light of the outer world into an atmo- 
sphere of sanctity for generations and generations, 
to be hid in some safe, unknown spot from the vio* 
lence of that i vandalism known as Twentieth Cen- 
tury Scientific Warfare! 

A local historian makes bold to say that this is 
the first time that the stained glass decorations of 
a sacred edifice have been unset and carried off to 
protect them from the profane hands of a possible 
invading enemy. He may be right. So, too, may 
be justified the writer in a local humorous paper 
who says he is preserving as a curiosity for his 
great-great-grandchildren to cherish, the parasol 
which his wife had to raise within the Cathedral to 
protect her from the sun while taking part in the 
services at high mass today, the Festa dello Statuto 
of 1915. S 

Passengers who arrived a few days ago from New 
York on the steamship Stampalia, including Maes- 
tro Giorgio Polacco, the Metropolitan Opera con- 
ductor, had the sensation of their lives. The vessel 
sailed Saturday, May 22. The captain before leav- 
ing received an anonymous letter telling him that 
if Italy went to war^efore the Stampalia reached 
port she would meet with the same fate as the Lusi- 
tania! A nice "bon voyage !" Arriving at Gibral- 
tar he received word from the Italian Government 
that three German submarines wfere believed to be 



16 The Spirit of Italy 

in the Mediterranean, using the Balearic Islands as 
a base of supplies. He was ordered to change his 
usual course, not stop at Naples, as scheduled, and 
make for Spezia instead. From Gibraltar to Spezia 
thejStampalia did some very fine zigzagging, with 
lights down at night and the lifeboats ready for ser- 
vice at any moment. No submarine attacks 
occurred, however, and the Stampalia reached Spe- 
zia without further incident, proceeding to Genoa 
next day. Were the passengers glad to put foot 
on terra firma? Ask yourself. 

By the way, anyone who comes to Italy for sight- 
seeing this summer will be sadly disappointed if he 
expects to see much of the country from the train 
windows. He will see exactly nothing, for the mili- 
tary order is that the curtains must be closed on 
every window. I traveled four hours from Genoa 
to Milan without getting more than an occasional 
stealthy peep at the outer world, and had even the 
same experience in an hour's ride in an electric 
train that runs between Milan and Varese. 

And speaking of Varese — in concluding this ram- 
bling letter — if you really do come over you can 
occupy the late J. Pierpont Morgan's favorite suite 
— you and your family — at the palatial Excelsior 
Hotel ( best golf links in Northern Italy ; panorama 
unrivaled, etc.) for not much more than ten and a 
half francs a dav, food and all modern comforts 



The Spirit of Italy 17 

included! There are twenty patrons at present at 
the immense hostelry. Signor Bonelli (who owns 
it all by himself) told me he didn't! mind having 
one or two more; their presence might add to the 
gayety of the season ! 



18 The Spirit of Italy 



II. 

Venice as It Appeared After Three Aeroplane At- 
tacks — A City That Lived on Its Tourist Trade 
Void of Strangers — Experiences of an Ameri- 
can Visitor — Conte Zorzi Talks for His Fellow- 
Citizens — Night Doubly Dark. 

Venice, Thursday, June 10, 1915. 

HADE of Goldoni! Shade of Casanova! 
C Shade of all the doges that ever ruled 

^ the Queen of the Adriatic ! What would 

anyone of them say if in the flesh he 
could visit Venice in these days of war? 
Never, surely, did anyone of them in his 
time see what I have seen since arriving here yes- 
terday — a Venice in total obscurity! 

Not a street lamp lighted at night! Not the 
faintest candle glow from a residence window! 
Not a twinkle from a gondola lantern on the placid 
laguna ! Not even a ray of moonlight ! Were it not 
for the stars alone the nights would be black as 
Erebus ! Think of it, you who know Venice in her 
gayest aspect, and try to picture her present condi- 
tion — a city that was ever widest awake in ithe 
small hours of the morning now compelled to go to 
bed with the pigeons of San Marco! 

I had decided to run over here from Milan to get 
what would be my first impression of Venice in 




The Spirit of Italy 19 

spite of the abnormal conditions, when I read in 
the evening paper of a third Austrian, aeroplane 
attack. This intensified my curiosity. So off I 
started Wednesday morning. Five hours and a 
half on the train with all the window curtains 
tightly drawn and the compartment crowded is not 
much fun ; but the tedium was relieved a bit when 
by a strange coincidence I discovered that my 
neighbor was the brother of Maestro Tanara of 
New York, whom I had seen the day before sailing. 
He got off atf Padua on his way to Udine, very 
grateful for the fresh family news I gave him. 

^w^ ^w^ ^F^ 

Arriving at Venice station, being apparently the 
only foreigner in the train and having heard of the 
suspicion with which all strangers were being re- 
garded, I carried my own satchel, asking no ques- 
tions, and simply followed the crowd as nonchalant 
as possible. Did I take a gondola? Not a bit 
of it; and I am going to leave Venice with what I 
believe must be a record for an American visitor — I 
have not been in a gondola once during my stay! 
The three cents omnibus steamer or vaporetto was 
good enough for me. The weather was damp, gray 
and chilly as I took my first ride along the Grand 
Canal. There was hardly a sign of life on either 
side; not one face at a palazzo window and pass- 
ing gondolas quite infrequent. 

At the Eialto Bridge I did discover at least half 



20 The Spirit of Italy 

a dozen persons on the embankment, and by a 
happy chance the mist lifted about this time, so 
that when the boat stopped and I got off at the San 
Marco landing the view of the laguna from that 
point was truly enchanting. 

Here I found much more human activity and 
realized that in spite of the departure of all for- 
eigners, except about thirty or forty Americans and 
English, it is probably true the present population, 
including the soldiers, who swarmed everywhere, is 
about two hundred thousand. Taking the precau- 
tion to pin a miniature American flag on my lapel, I 
proceeded along the narrow streets, still following 
the crowd, passed through an arckway, till I found 
jnyself looking out on what I realized was the 
Piazza of San Marco, to be dumbfounded by the 
modernity of the rebuilt Campanile, contrasting so 
rudely, as I thought, with the fantastic, Oriental, 
exotic beauty of the Basilica, whose marbles have 
been enriched by the passing of centuries. 

At last I ventured to inquire my way to the Hotel 
Jolanda, and had response from three or four amia- 
ble idlers who recognized my nationality and were 
convinced I was not a German spy. A clean, bright 
faced youngster who said he was Tony Origoni 
impressed me most favorably. I made a bargain for 
his services as guide at two francs a day and per- 
quisites. He took me along the arcades of the 



The Spirit of Italy 21 

Piazza, where one alter another of those shops so 
enticing to American vistors has been closed. He 
introduced me to the San Marco pigeons and 
bought me two cents' worth of corn to feed them, 
while the street photographer, who had been fast 
asleep, woke up to make a snapshot as the pigeons 
perched on my hand and hat. Poor pigeons ! they 
don't get as much to eat these days as they do in 
normal times, so that a stranger is a welcome vis- 
itor. Around past the Ducal Palace, along the 
water front, over the Paglia bridge, from which one 
sees the Bridge of Sighs, past the famous prison 
and a few steps more and Tony landed me safely at 
the hotel named after the oldest daughter of Italy's 
royal family. 

Signor Inganni, the proprietor, was both sur- 
prised and cordial. His is one of the few hotels still 
open, and all his other guests were army and navy 
officers. I convinced him also that I was perfectly 
harmless and got a room, after which I lost no time 
in finding, with Tony's aid, the police headquarters, 
where I had no difficulty in getting the necessary 
permit to stay in Venice. 

"Glad to see you were not afraid of the aero- 
planes," said the Commissioner. "They haven't 
frightened the Venetians in the least. And they 
have paid well for their stupid attempts to annoy 
us." 

^r ^^ ^r 

Armed with my permits, I started out to find the 



22 The Spirit of Italy 

office of the Gazetta di Yenezia, the leading news- 
paper of the city, to present a letter of introduction 
to the editor, Conte Elio Zorzi. Tony led me by 
devious ways over many little bridges back to the 
Piazzo San Marco. We stopped to look at the 
masons reinforcing the Gothic arches of the Ducal 
Palazzo with solid brickwork and piling tons of 
small bags of sand around the base of the Cam- 
panile. We peeped into San Marco Church, where 
we found more sandbags piled against the walls, 
the statues of the twelve apostles swathed in stuffed 
bagging and scaffolding being erected everywhere 
that the protection of the edifice from injury from 
bombs could suggest. Despite the noise of ham- 
mers a religious service was proceeding calmly and 
devotionally, though there were more priests 
around the altar than worshippers. 

Out again to the Piazza. More movement was in 
evidence, but more than half the men you saw were 
officers or soldiers. The tables within and in front 
of the fashionable afternoon tea rooms on the north 
side of the Piazza, Quadri's and Lavena's, were fill- 
ing up. As every civilian and many of the military 
were Venetians, the entire absence of the usual for- 
eign element made it a big family party. The women 
seemed quite smartly dressed. The war has only 
begun for Italy and the time hasn't arrived for the 
dominant black note in women's toilets. 

I had been walking five minutes through more 
narrow labyrinthian streets when a naval blue- 



The Spirit of Italy 23 

jacket hurried up behind me and, tapping me on 
the shoulder, asked me who I was and what I 
wanted. Immediately a crowd gathered around. I 
looked for little Tony, but evidently he got scared, 
for he had disappeared. I smilingly assured my 
naval inquisitor that I was anything but German 
and that my mission was irreproachable, handing 
him my passport and police permit. He made me 
remove my hat; to see if I resembled the photograph 
and was going through the movements of seeming 
to read the documents for the benefit of the crowd, 
when an infantry captain came along. 

"What is this?" he asked of me, very courteously. 

I explained. Just what he said to the zealous 
sailor man I /'don't know, but it was short, sharp 
and decisive, and his departure was so abrupt that 
immediately the crowd, with true Venetian sense of 
humor, "handed him the laugh," while a young sol- 
dier approaching me said in excellent English : 

"Are you from New York? I am, and if you are 
I'll take you anywhere you want to go." 

"So will I," said an old chap with a pointed 
beard, who looked like a G. A. E. veteran (also in 
tolerable English), and who added in a whisper: 
"Are you a Mason? Sshh! Masons are not very 
popular in Venice." 

The soldier proved to be a ' Neapolitan, Giuseppe 
Firo, who had been a barber at the Hoffman House. 
My Masonic friend was one Leone Levi, agent of 
the K Wilson Steamship Line and a former anti-Aus- 



24 The Spirit of Italy 

trian conspirator, who years ago had to run away 
from Trieste to save his skin. Thanks to their 
courtesy, I soon reached the Gazette office and 
Conte Zorzi. 

«<<5* ^& ^& 

A descendant of the Doges (as I afterward 
learned), I found Conte Zorzi a young man of 
charming personality — tall, slender, refined in fea- 
ture — a true Italian aristocrat. He, too, was sur- 
prised to know that any American would think of 
visiting Venice at such a time until he learned that 
I was a colleague. 

"Glad to do anything in my power to serve you," 
said he, "but I have to report to my regiment twice 
a day and may have to leave for the front any day. 
However, as we have an hour to spare let's go to 
have tea at the Piazza." 

We were about to start when a boy brought 
Signor Zorzi a handful of press telegrams. Glanc- 
ing over them, he suddenly remarked : 

"Ah ! here's something that may interest you !" 

And it did! It was the news just arrived of 
William J. Bryan's resignation. Of course he 
wished to know what I thought of it and what effect 
it might have on the attitude of the American 
Government toward Germany, etc. What did I tell 
him? That, my reader, is a professional secret. 

Glancing around the Ban Marco Piazza as we 



The Spirit of Italy 25 

sipped our tea, I remarked that the gathering 
seemed to be fairly numerous. 

"Well, my dear sir," said Signor Zorzi, "there 
is nobody here — practically nobody. This time a 
year ago you would have seen a multitude. Hun- 
dreds and hundreds of the young men of our best 
families have left for the front, many of them 
volunteering because they hadn't been called. 
The fact is no city in Italy has felt the war 
or is likely to feel the war so keenly as Venice, 
so near are we to the field of action. Further- 
more, there is no part of Italy where a more 
ardent patriotism exists. Do you know that Venice 
was the first to use the term Patria as applied to 
Italy? It is true, and we're very proud of the fact. 
Kemember also that the Trieste district and the 
Dalmatian coast were ours — Venice's — and always 
have been ours in race and sympathy. For in- 
stance, a Dalmatian- Venetian steamship company 
was being formed recently. The Dalmatians asked 
that the vessels fly the old Venetian flag in prefer- 
ence to any other. Here, too, we know from our 
fathers what Austrian rule meant in its most tyran- 
nical form. Never, in my mind, was a war more 
just or more popular than the war we just have 
begun. Our Green Book and Salandra's magnifi- 
cent speech should satisfy every neutral." 

Of Signor Zorzi's earnestness, enthusiasm and 
confidence in the outcome there wasn't a shadow of 
a doubt. As he seemed to know almost everybody 
we met I take it that his opinion is thoroughly rep- 



26 The Spirit of Italy 

resentative of Venetian sentiment, especially as the 
business director of the paper, Cavalieri Bolla 
(who, I learned, is a leader of the Conservative 
majority in the city government) later on expressed 
himself in like manner. 

"As you come from a great republic," continued 
the Conte, "I hope you will observe the paradoxical 
fact that while Venice is one of the most intensely 
aristocratic cities in Italy it is really one of the 
most democratic. Go back and you'll find that 
intelligence always furnished the basis for ennoble- 
ment in Venice. The people at large always recog- 
nized this and their relations with the old aristoc- 
racy have always been cordial, never servile. This 
Piazza is the Salon of Venice, where every one 
comes to meet everyone else — and you will note 
that the simple woman of the people with dark eyes, 
dark hair and traditional dark mantilla takes her 
afternoon stroll with her companion under the 
arcade with the same air of independence as the 
lady of the noblesse. And now more so than ever, 
for she, too, has sent a brother, father or sweetheart 
to fight for her country's future freedom with just 
the same spirit of patriotic sacrifice as her social 
superior." 

Signor Zorzi told me that I must not expect to 
see anything but the external beauties of Venice, 
as all the fine works of art had been removed from 



The Spirit of Italy 27 

the galleries and churches to elsewhere in Italy. 
No one is allowed to enter the Ducal Palazzo. To 
ascend the Campanile is forbidden, although I saw 
no indications of a wireless telegraph installation. 
Certainly San Marco's Church is not being put to 
military uses, so that there can be no possible ex- 
cuse for its bombardment. Yet three aeroplane 
attacks have so far been made on Venice. The first 
occurred before it was officially known in Venice 
that war had been declared. On this occasion an 
aeroplane was brought down and two aviators cap- 
tured. On another occasion the Austrian pilot and 
his mechanic lost their lives. At the last visitation 
a bomb fell in the Koyal Garden near the Piazza. 
Two visits took place, about four o'clock in the 
morning, the other about eleven o'clock at night. 
The Venetians were amply warned of the approach 
of the hostile aviators by the loud-voiced sirens at 
each end of the city. I am assured by the American 
Consul, B. Harvey Carroll, Jr. — a bully good fellow 
from Texas — that there Was no undue excitement, 
however. The fact is that the Venetians received 
the aeroplanes in much the same spirit as I remem- 
ber the Parisians did ten months ago. 

It was eight o'clock when I sat down to dinner 
at my hotel, and I was just about to peel an orange 
when suddenly the electric lights went out. It was 
five minutes to nine. The proprietor rushed to 



28 The Spirit of Italy 

close the solid shutters of the windows while the 
waiters hurried with candles for the tables. Then 
it was that I realized more keenly that these are war 
times in Italy. The night before I saw Milan 
brightly lighted as New York. It was another 
story in suffering Venice! In Milan business 
seemed to be going on apparently normally. In 
Venice it may be described as nil. A port that has 
an annual tonnage of over three millions absolutely 
closed ! A city that thrives off its foreign visitors 
almost without a stranger in the streets! A city 
heretofore illuminated at night like Fairyland sud- 
denly assuming the aspect of a City of the Dead ! 

"Yes," said Boniface Inganni when I asked. "Yes, 
you can go to the Piazza San Marco for your coffee, 
as you seem to have learned the way; but I advise 
you not to make any inquiries as you go along." 

Groping to a table near a little group under the 
arcade I found a chair, and when the waiter ap- 
proached I simply said "Caffe !" I got it, sipped it 
slowlv and silentlv, as most everv one else was 
doing; watched the shadowy human figures that 
passed and repassed across the Piazza ; feared even 
to strike a match to light a cigar ; finished my coffee 
and laid a franc upon the table. The waiter took 
the coin and handed me the change. I don't know 
if it was right, for I made no effort to see, but sim- 
ply handed him a tip, and, putting the rest in my 
pocket, walked away without uttering a word. 

It all was so spooky — so like a strange dream ! I 
confess I didn't feel quite comfortable, and as I 



The Spirit of Italy 29 

paused for a few moments to look again at the 
Bridge of Sighs, which certainly never presented an 
aspect more sombre than at that moment, a bit of 
a shiver ran through my bones and made me glad 
to get back to the candle-lit lobby of the Jolanda. 



30 The Spirit of Italy 



III. 



Apology of a "Loafer" in War-Time Venice — Rare 
Fascination of the City of the Doges in These 
Bellicose Days and Nights — The Disappear- 
ance of San Marco's Horses — Tramping with 
Tony and Elio — An Adventure at the Lido. 

Venice. Saturday, June 12, 1915. 

ARTIME VENICE is so fascinating that 
it is with regret I am returning to noisy 
Milan today. I've spent three nights 
here — and what nights! — the heat of 
Hades, with one's solid shutters closed 
tight as wax — but no sign of another 
enemy aeroplane. 

Perhaps the Austrians have heard by this time 
that the Italian Aviation Corps has been reinforced 
by a corps of picked French experts. I met the 
French Naval Captain in charge of them this morn- 
ing. He talked quite frankly to me and expressed 
himself as more than satisfied with what he had 
seen of the Italian army and navy. The Italian 
artillery especially impressed him. As to further 
attacks by air on Venice he couldn't speak, "but," 
he added, "we're fully prepared for them, and if the 
Austrians are anxious to come again they will have 
a lively reception." 




The Spirit of Italy 31 

"Highbrows" may wonder what on earth I've 
been doing with myself all this time in Venice with 
the city in blackness of darkness at night and with 
the museums and show places closed to the out- 
sider, and the fine pictures and other valuable 
objects of art removed from the churches. 

To be honest, I've simply been loafing. And I 
can't imagine any more ideal loafing place at this 
particular time if you can stand the sirocco and its 
oppressive heat. For there are no impudent, intru- 
sive professional "guides" to annoy you; the well- 
to-do and those not quite so well-to-do citizens are 
contributing their money and services so gener- 
ously toward the relief of the needy that seldom 
does a beggar approach you ; the endless labyrinth 
of little streets is so inviting to curious exploration 
with a picturesque surprise awaiting you every five 
minutes of your wandering ; so genial is the manner 
with which you are received by the proprietor of 
the little tobacco shop or refreshment bar, once he 
has "sized you up"; so lazy and careless is the 
movement of every man, woman and child you meet 
that it justifies your own air of idleness; so deli- 
cious is the coffee they make for you with their 
Italian "caffe espresso" machine and serve at a zinc 
counter; the Venetian pastry (war hasn't inter- 
fered with its production) is so tempting even to 
the dyspeptic palate, and the provincial wine so fra- 
grant, innocuous and — cheap; and, above all, 
there is the self-flattering consciousness that you 
are almost the only outsider, a sort of privileged 



32 The Spirit of Italy 

guest, in this rare city that boasts itself possessor 
of the purest Latin blood to be found anywhere on 
the Italic peninsula. 

Consider all this (and it is a mere suggestion to 
your imagination), and then can you imagine any 
pastime more physically, mentally and morally 
profitable than wartime loafing in Venice "the 
Serenissima?" 

«/5* a^ ^^7 



You may remember that I told you of the abrupt 
disappearance of Tony, my little improvised guide, 
when I was "held up" as a "suspicious character" 
the day of my arrival here. Well, what was my 
surprise when about to leave the hotel early the 
next morning to find Tony awaiting me outside. He 
looked a bit shame-faced, and as if to fortify him- 
self brought another little chap named Elio Zanoni 
(Do you remember your Bulwer Lytton?) with 
him. Tony is slender, serious, reserved; Elio is 
plump, round of face, merry of eye, more typically 
a Venetian boy of the people. They make a good 
pair. I asked Tony no questions as to why he de- 
serted me and he volunteered no explanation. We 
seemed tacitly to agree that explanations were 
unnecessary. It was plain, however, that somehow 
or other his confidence had been restored, and from 
then until now Tony and Elio have been my shad- 
ows, excepting when from time to time I suggested 



The Spirit of Italy 33 

that they run away and amuse themselves, as I 
didn't expect them to work themselves to death. 

We had a good morning of it, too, for the little 
rascals kept me going for four hours. They thought 
I should begin by making another visit to San 
Marco's Church, especially to show me the vacant 
space over the central doorway. 

"There's nothing up there now, you see," said 
Tony. "They took the four horses away and hid 
them so that the Austrians couldn't throw bombs 
on them. Where? Oh, nobody must know, but 
they're safe. It would be awful if anything hap- 
pened to them, you know, for all we Venetians love 
San Marco's horses. They've been there for cen- 
turies." 

The boys' reverential affection for the horses, 
while not based on any definite historical informa- 
tion, is representative of the feeling of the entire 
population of Venice. Conte Zorzi, my newspaper 
friend, subsequently told me that when it was de- 
cided to remove the San Marco horses the an- 
nouncement was a real shock to popular sentiment. 
Nothing is more symbolic of the greatness of Venice 
than they, for they were brought by the great Doge 
Dandolo from Constantinople, which Venice had 
just captured, and where they adorned the Arch of 
Constantine in the very beginning of the thirteenth 
century, when the Venetian republic was at the 
height of her glory. Over the portal of San Marco 
they remained until Napoleon took them to Paris, 
whence they were returned after his downfall. 



34 The Spirit op Italy 

"What! Take down the horses!" exclaimed the 
man in the street and his wife as well. "Why, it 
would be like lowering our flag at the approach of 
the enemy!" 

Practical counsel — and it may surprise many 
Americans what practical common sense is to be 
found these days in high places in Italy's govern- 
ment, national and local — prevailed. The bronze 
horses were carefully "boxed," and in the presence 
of a multitude of citizens in the Piazza were ten- 
derly lowered to the ground. It was an emotional 
occasion, I am told, and there were many moist 
handkerchiefs during the proceeding. Venetian 
humor, however, soon took a more cheerful view of 
the disappearance of the horses. 

"They've gone to the front," it said, "and are now 
galloping toward Trieste. Later on they'll reach 
Vienna." 

Leaving San Marco's church the boys kept me on 
the go, steadily walking. They seemed to regard 
the Kialto bridge as a very important feature of 
their city, and insisted upon my making a thorough 
inspection of the Fish Market. They were not so 
keen about churches, but they were very anxious 
that I should see another horse, of which they evi 
dently were very proud, and which, they told me, 
was not going to leave Venice. So they took me on 
quite a tramp past the statue of Goldoni along a 
score of different little streets and alleys until we 



The Spirit of Italy 35 

reached an open space facing the Church of Saints 
John and Paul. 

"There it is!" said the boys. "That's the finest 
bronze horse in all the world," and then directed 
my attention to the equestrian statue of Bartholo- 
meo Colleoni, who, your history will tell you, was 
a famous fifteenth century Venetian military chief- 
tain (though he came from Lombardy) in process 
of being encased in a wooden framework, later 
on to be submerged in sand. As the Colleoni 
horse was modeled by the Florentine master Ver- 
rocchio, it may be noted that the opinion of Tony 
and Elio has been confirmed by some very eminent 
authorities! This interest in horses on their part 
at length led me to remark: 

"I don't suppose you boys ever saw a real live 
horse." 

"Oh, yes, I did," replied Tony. "I've often seen 
live horses." 

"Where?" I asked. 

"In the theatre!" 

"And I've seen them at Mestre," spoke up Elio, 
Mestre being the town at the mainland end of the 
long Venice railroad bridge. 

I was rather tired when the boys brought me 
back to my hotel. I've no idea how far we had 
tramped. I think the little rascals were having a 
bit of a joke at my expense. 

"Elio," said I to one of them, "do you know how 
many bridges there are in this city of yours?" 



36 The Spirit of Italy 

"Not exactly, Signor," he replied, "but there are 
a very great many." 

"I've heard there were nearly four hundred," 
said I. 

"Perhaps there are, Signor." 

"I'm sure of it, for you and Tony have taken me 
over at least two hundred of them." 

Tony's mouth opened, but Elio, who was the wit, 
replied : 

"Then we'll take you over the other two hundred 
tomorrow." 

^®^ »^^ i^^ 

Everybody who visits the city in normal times 
visits the Lido, the big sandbar that shuts off the 
Laguna from the Adriatic — a sort of Long Beach, 
or rather Fire Island kind of place, with a magnif- 
icent hotel which can be blown up in five minutes 
if military necessity demands it, "Nothing doing" 
at the Lido this summer! No gay bathing parties 
of foreigners frolicking on its far-famed beach ! 

"Can I visit it?" I asked a most interesting old 
gentleman of the old-fashioned Union Club type, 
who spoke perfect English and whose card bore the 
name Olivero Mozzani. 

Parenthetically let me say that I met Signor 
Mozzani by chance in a dim little wine shop on a 
quaint little narrow street sipping a beautiful 
amber fluid which I discovered was a light Verona 
wine, which retails for two cents a goblet. (Jim 



The Spirit of Italy 37 

Huneker would give up Pilsener if he could taste 
this stuff.) 

"You might have to make a lot of explanation," 
Signor Mozzani replied, "and I can hardly advise 
you to try it." 

So I gave up the idea; but when after dinner I 
noticed a steamboat at a landing near my hotel 
taking on passengers and learned that it went to 
the Lido I thought it would be no harm to attempt 
the round trip — about twenty minutes each way — 
and get a cooling off. It was quite dark when the 
boat reached the other side of the Laguna. I sat 
still, with no intention of going ashore. In a few 
minutes, however, on came two soldiers with guns, 
two policemen and three or four other ununiformecl 
persons. They surrounded me immediately. 

"Well, I'm in for it this time," I said to myself 
and felt in my pocket to be sure I had my "docu- 
ments." 

"Who are you, signor, and what do you want 
here?" said one of the soldiers with a gun. 

"Simply an Americano honesto," I replied, "tak- 
ing a steamboat ride to try to get cool. I didn't 
want to get off at the Lido, and I hope you'll allow 
me to spend the night as usual in my hotel. Here 
are my papers." 

They saw I was good-humored and were very 
courteous. "Sorry, signor, but in the circum- 
stances you must come to the Questura (Police 
Commissioner) and let him decide." 

"Delighted to meet him," I responded. "But I 



38 The Spirit op Italy 

hope there is another boat back to Venice. I 
assure you I haven't the least desire to spend the 
night at the Lido. I thought Venice was dark, but 
over here it seems to be several degrees darker." 

They assured me pleasantly there was another 
boat, and off we went along what seemed like a nice 
shady country road. Ten minutes' walk with my 
guard brought us to the Commissioner. I found 
an amiable-looking man in his shirt sleeves. I don't 
know what my captors told him beyond the fact 
that I confessed being a newspaper correspondent, 
but I had my passport and letters of identification 
in his hands with great prompitude. He examined 
them carefully, but my passport interested him 
least. When he read a letter I had recently received 
from an Italian friend, who lives in Sorrento, he 
looked up and said : 

"That's sufficient for me. I'm sorry you have 
been put to this inconvenience; but I see that you 
understand this is war time." 

"Thank you," said I, "and if there is a cafe in the 
neighbohood open, can't we all go over and have a 
little refreshment?" 

"If we do," replied the Commissioner, smilingly, 
"you won't get back to Venice on that last boat. 
Come to the Lido after the war and we'll accept 
your invitation." 

We shook hands, wished each other's country 
well and parted, my captors this time all accom- 
panying me back to the boat as a guard of honor. 

When I met Signor Mozzani in the morning he 



The Spirit of Italy 39 

chuckled. "Served you right," he said. "Only what 
a pity they didn't keep you all night. It would 
have been an interesting experience — eh?" 

"Wouldn't have been so bad," I replied, "if I 
could have had a bag of Venetian cakes and a little 
flask of that Verona." 

«^P ^8? ^W 

Nothing better illustrates the economic disaster 
suffered by Venice than the condition of that most 
important of its industries — the lace business. I 
suppose every American woman who visits this city 
buys a bit of lace, and one of the show places is the 
great lace-making school and shop established 
nearly fifty years ago by the late Commendatore 
Michelangelo Jesurum. Signor Aldo Jesurum, 
the present head of the family, took me through his 
place. Not a customer anywhere in sight, though 
piled around us on shelves and stowed in cases were 
lace goods valued at probably a half million dol- 
lars. The beautifully fitted and decorated room — it 
was an old church — which is used for the school 
generally has nearly two hundred young girls busy 
with their fingers. 

There were only 1xve when I made my visit. 



40 The Spirit of Italy 



IV. 

Back to Bustling Milan — Sad Incident on Leaving 
Venice — Row the Belgian Broke Loose in Sig- 
nor Be Sirens — Organized Munition Indus- 
tries and Organized Charity at Work — Five 
o'Clock Tea at Cova's — San Marino Is No Joke. 

Milan, Wednesday, June 16, 1915. 



ALTHOUGH it took only five hours to come 
from Venice to Milan, it seemed as 
though I had within that time traversed 
just as many centuries. It's a long way 
in imagination from San Marco's Byzan- 
tine basilica to the Galleria Vittorio 
Emannuele; from the tranquility of the grand 
canal, with its gondolas these days so few and far 
between, to the bustling activity that characterizes 
Milan central's piazza, with its human crowds and 
endless procession of circumnavigating electric 
tramcars. I left Venice last Saturday after lunch- 
eon, having been escorted to the railroad station by 
my little guides, Tony and Elio. We got to be great 
friends, the youngsters and I, and the native polite- 
ness, intelligence and sense of humor of those Vene- 
tian children of the poeple made an impression on 
me not likely soon to fade away. 

I had just had my return ticket stamped when 
Elio, pulling my coat sleeve, directed my attention 



The Spirit of Italy 41 

fto a gathering crowd at the station exit. A quar- 
tette of soldiers had just arrived. Between them 
marched a grisly-bearded peasant about forty years 
old, his hands behind him in a manacle. I caught 
a glimpse of the prisoner's face as the soldiers hur- 
ried him along toward the canal landing. In it 
was a look of despair — the look of a man in whom 
every spark of hope was extinct — a look to haunt 
you in your waking hours and trouble you in your 
dreams. The crowd, which knew what it all meant, 
watched him pass in silence. 

"He shot an Italian sentinel, and is going to get 
shot himself," explained Elio. "He was a tradi- 
tore." 

The boys, like their elders of both sexes, took it 
as a matter of course. Already these little fellows 
realized that "war is war." But I couldn't help 
shuddering. "Poor devil!" I thought. "He did 
what he could to help keep the Hapsburg family in 
a job," and I wondered if the heroes of Serajevo 
were not wiser. 

Bidding my young guides "a rivederci" and 
promising to send them picture postcards from 
America, I hurried to my train to find it just as 
crowded as one might expect in times of peace. The 
return trip was unmarked by any unusual incident 
except the curious coincidence that when we 
reached Vicenza, Signor Tanara, whom I met on 
my way to Venice, boarded the train and again en- 
tered the compartment in which I was seated. He 
had been at Udine and Cividale, quite close to the 



42 The Spirit of Italy 

field of military operations, and was in high spirits 
as a result of what he had seen and heard. All the 
other men in the compartment who were not sol- 
diers were war supply agents or traveling sales- 
men, and I only regretted that my knowledge of 
Italian was not sufficient to follow their very volu- 
ble conversation and enjoy their stories and jokes, 
for judging from the way they enjoyed them they 
must have been good ones and quite up to the stand- 
ard established by our "American drummers." The 
best I could do was to relate in "pidgeon" Italian 
two or three "Ford" jokes. I'm proud to say they 
"went" and perhaps are "going still." 



^^^ jc 



Among the interesting people I have met in Italy 
is Signor Emilio de Strens, who is the chief repre- 
sentative in Italy of the Babcock-Wilcox Boiler 
Company, and to whom I had a letter of introduc- 
tion from Mr. John Gilbert Ward, treasurer of the 
parent company in New York. Signor de Strens, 
who is an important factor in Milan's industrial 
and commercial life, was born in Belgium, his 
father having been a native of that stricken coun- 
try ; his mother an Italian. His father dying when 
he was nine years old, with his mother he then came 
to her parents' home in this country. 

"And here," said Signor de Strens to* me, "I've 
lived ever since, though business takes me fre- 
quently to England. Indeed, I've always consid- 



The Spirit of Italy 43 

ered myself an Italian, but I found immediately 
upon the invasion of my native land that there were 
two men inside of me, and that the other one who 
had been under cover so many years, was a Belgian. 
I was somewhat startled at myself to realize how 
the horrors of that invasion affected me ! The Ital- 
ian Government declared its neutrality, but, I as- 
sure you, the Belgian inside me did not. However, 
the Italian inside of me knew the facts. There was 
no other course for Italy at that time to pursue. 
We were totally unprepared for war. Some say 
that if we had marched then we would have been 
forced to march with Germany and Austria. There 
were neutralists and neutralists — some who were 
uncompromisingly against our getting into the gen- 
eral war; others who were only neutralists in ap- 
pearance, their idea being to keep out until we 
were in condition to fight, and then cast our lot 
with the Allies. 

"You should have been here when Salandra of- 
fered his resignation. The situation was most 
tense. We lowered the flags on our office. We felt 
Italy's honor and future were at stake. But the 
instant we heard that the King had refused to ac- 
cept the resignation and that war was 'on/ up went 
our flag again with Belgium's. That was a happy 
moment for us all." 

Signor de Strens is one of the committee of civil- 
ians who are organizing the munition industry in 
this part of the country. He tells me that the spirit 
of co-operation among the owners and managers of 



44 The Spirit of Italy 

the big manufacturing industries would do credit 
to any nation. The months of preparation which 
preceded Italy's declaration of war have made it 
easier to adapt the various interests to the exigen- 
cies of present conditions. Nor should one over- 
look the spirit of charity which the city has shown 
in these hours. 

"Within the past few weeks," said ;Signor de 
Strens, "over four million francs have been volun- 
tarily contributed to the relief fund by our people. 
It won't be many days before it will touch five mil- 
lions. That means a million dollars ; but don't for- 
get that a million dollars in an Italian city even 
like Milan signifies very much more than a million 
dollars in your rich country. Milan has set the 
pace and other Italian cities are worthily follow- 
ing her lead." 

It doesn't require much effort to discover the fact 
that the Milanese are not merely giving their money 
generously toward the war relief organizations; 
they are nobly contributing their personal services 
as well. The Red Cross organization has been most 
active. New hospitals are being equipped contin- 
ually. A portion of the central railroad station has 
been set apart for relief purposes, and many of the 
most prominent women of this city take turns day 
and night preparing for and receiving prisoners or 
wounded soldiers. Generally such arrivals from 
the front occur during the night. The prisoners as 



I 



The Spirit of Italy 45 

a rule up to the present, after being fed at the 
Milan station, are taken out to the spacious old 
citadel in Allessandria. They include specimens 
of almost every one of the many races that com- 
prise the Austra-Hungarian Empire. An Italian 
officer told me that they are a pretty good-looking 
lot of fellows, worthy foemen. The Hungarians 
especially make an impression on their captors, and 
from all accounts there is less bitterness of feeling 
as regards them than exists between the Italians 
and the Austrians proper. From a letter written 
by a Hungarian officer in captivity to his people at 
home the censor took an extract which was printed 
in the papers here. 

"Curious people, these Italians," wrote the Hun- 
garian. "Not a bit ugly toward us. Just a trifle 
cynical, however, in their view of life, but always 
chivalrous. I like the smart uniforms of their of- 
ficers, which they wear with such a fine air. I 
should like myself to have a uniform made of their 
gray-green stuff, and I have decided that if it is 
possible I shall get myself a pair of the leather leg- 
gings which they affect and which are both so serv- 
iceable and stylish." 

I wouldn't be astonished if by this time he has 
not had a pair of leggings presented to him by some 
Italian officer of his own rank. It would be an act 
quite Latin in its impulse. 

^w^ ^^r ^^r 
War or no war, "smart" and near-"smart" Milan 



46 The Spirit of Italy 

continues to drink tea and eat ices and pastry at 
Cova's. You can't remain long in Milan without 
discovering Cova's, especially if there are "women 
folk" in your party or if, as an unattached male you 
have made the acquaintance of a nice Milanese 
family or some American or English resident. 
Cova's is a sort of combination of Sherry's and the 
Plaza palm room. Not quite so extensive in its ap- 
pointments, to be sure, but what it lacks in spa- 
ciousness it makes up in coziness. It is just across 
the way from the famous Scala Opera House on 
one side and the de-Teutonized Banca Commer- 
ciale's office on the other side, while from the ever- 
coveted corner window you can look out on the 
statue of Leonardo da Vinci in the Plaza and see 
one of the lofty entrances to the Galleria just be- 
yond. 

I said that tea drinking continues at Cova's, but 
it seemed to me that "five o' clocks" just now are a 
rather perfunctory affair on the part of those who 
indulge in them. One sees many vacant tables, 
and women and men — the latter chiefly young of- 
ficers awaiting orders — had the air of being there 
more by habit than for pleasure. Usually you might 
hear a half dozen languages being spoken, evidence 
of the tourist tide which flowed through Milan in 
ante-bellum days. Yesterday afternoon when I 
dropped in I heard nothing but Italian, and the 
fact that we were speaking English attracted more 
or less attention to our party. Incidentally, I may 
say that two ladies at our table were members of 



The Spirit of Italy 47! 

a well-known Detroit family, mother and daughter, 
who have lived in Italy for five or six years, the 
daughter having chosen the opera as a career. 

"Notwithstanding the war," isaid the younger 
lady to me "I expect to sign a contract in a day or 
two to sing at several opera houses in the south of 
Italy, including Taranto and Lecce — possibly also 
at Palermo, where they like me very much. During 
the winter and spring, before Italy entered the war, 
I had plenty to do. Apparently the provincial 
towns will continue to give their traditional season 
of opera if they can find the musicians for their 
orchestras. At all events, I'm going to stay right 
here in Italy, and there are several other American 
girls who like myself are remaining here, and who 
believe they can continue to earn enough to perfect 
themselves in the Italian repertoire." A fact which 
I confirmed for myself at Madame Bonini's famous 
Operatic Pensione in Cathedral Square. 

When I left Cova's and strolled over to the Gal- 
leria, as usual toward dinner hour I found it as 
every other day I've been here, fairly well occupied 
by a walking, talking crowd almost entirely male. 
The patrons of the Savini and Bim restaurants — the 
former has an admirable kitchen, the latter serves 
excellent music — were filling those establishments. 
I saw Ermete Novelli, the distinguished actor, well 
known in America, paying for his aperitif, and I 



48 The Spirit of Italy 

almost bumped into Maestro Puccini, accompanied 
by his son wearing the uniform of a second lieuten- 
ant, which reminded me that in the evening "La 
Boheme" was the attraction at the Carcano The- 
atre (which ranks after the Seala and Dal Verme), 
where Milan is having a popular price opera season. 
The tenor is none too good as a singer; "but," ex- 
plained a sympathetic Italian to me, "he is a nice 
fellow and has six children." So the management 
continues to let him sing until he is called to the 
colors. Several theatres, by the way, are open at 
which popular Italian plays and translations from 
the French are on the bill. .The attendance is im- 
posing, but I hear that a large proportion of the 
audience is there by "invitation," and business at 
the theatre box offices — excepting those of the 
"movies" — is not very encouraging. Indeed, the- 
atre people have had a hard time of it during the 
past year, and if those American girls I've spoken 
of succeed in realizing their hopes they may thank 
their lucky stars or exceptional talent. 

Little San Marino has spoken. She insists 
upon being taken seriously and has officially de- 
clared her sympathies. Unimportant as this may 
seem, there were those who argued that if the tiny 
millennium-old republic had declared herself neu- 
tral an Austrian aeroplane could land there — just 
as a belligerent warship can enter a neutral port 
and recoal under certain conditions — renew its sup- 



The Spirit of Italy 49 

ply of gasoline and then proceed to bombard unde- 
fended Rimini. San Marino's loyalty to "Mother 
Italy," however, has been announced in an eloquent 
proclamation. When news of Italy's intervention 
reached the republic it was received by the San Ma- 
rinese with great rejoicing. Two hundred young 
men asked to join the Garibaldi Legion, but on 
learning that the Italian Government had decided 
against the formation of volunteer corps, at once 
enrolled in the Italian regular army. The official 
proclamation by San Marino, which followed, con- 
cludes thus : 

"Our republic," it said, "is sacred to the grati- 
tude and admiration of all Italy for having in her 
stormy days given a secure asylum to Giuseppe 
Garibaldi. Let us render ourselves worthy of our 
past so that Italy may be able, with the Poet Car- 
ducci, whose spirit presides over her ne*w destinies, 
to cry out aloud : 
" 'Honor to thee, ancient republic, virtuous, noble, 

faithful! 
" 'Honor to thee, and may you forever share in 

Italy's life and glory !' " 

«^P >J& B^P 

In the same day's newspapers I find two little 
items of peculiar human interest. One of them tells 
of a youngster of seventeen who had lost all the 
members of his family in the earthquake of Pescina. 
An automobilist of the regiment sent to aid the 
stricken population took an interest in him, and he 



50 The Spirit of Italy 

became the mascot of his company. The war break- 
ing out, the regiment was transferred to Bologna. 
Almost broken-hearted, the boy — his name is Cec- 
chino — was left behind. The other night he turned 
up at the beloved regiment's barracks in Bologna 
and nothing would satisfy him until he was ac- 
cepted as a volunteer to go to the front. He had 
traveled two hundred miles on foot, starting out 
with only forty cents. Yet he managed to get 
enough to eat during the eight days required to 
make the trip. Good luck, say we all, to Cecchino ! 

The other item deals with a certain Antonio 
Maria Ferri who, still possessed of his mental fac- 
ulties and wonderfully vigorous physically, has just 
celebrated his one hundredth birthday at his little 
home near Bologna. Eighty years ago he did his 
military service under the Papal rule. This did not 
prevent his nearly being shot by the Austrians for 
sympathizing with and aiding the revolutionary 
party upward of sixty years ago. Imagine with 
what interest the old fellow must follow current 
events. 

"The only thing that I can't make up my mind 
about," said he to an interviewer, "is whether to 
offer myself as a volunteer for immediate service 
or wait until the government calls out the class 
of 1816 !" 

It may pain some good folk to learn that Signor 
Ferri smokes a long pipe and confines his liquid 
refreshment almost entirely to the wine of his coun- 
try. But I must add that he considers himself a 
model of temperance. 



The Spirit of Italy 51 



V. 



Milan Gets a Real Taste of War — Affecting Arrival 
from the Internment Camps of Austria — Wom- 
en, Children and Old Men By the Score — Con- 
fidence in Generalissimo Cadorna — War and 
Its Effect on Italian Music. 

Milan, Thursday, June 24, 1915. 



T last Milan is having ocular demonstra- 
yV tion of the fact that Italy really is at 

war. During the past two days several 
thousand refugees from Trieste and 
Pola and the districts surrounding 
these cities of "Unredeemed Italy" have 
been pouring into the Central Kailroad station. 

A month long Odyssey has been theirs. Those 
who have reached the motherland are but the ad- 
vance guard of thousands of others on their way. 
All classes and conditions are represented. But the 
great majority are women and children. The males 
are all over fifty years or under eighteen. 

A touching spectacle they offer. Many of the 
women are persons of refinement. Most of the sex 
are of the humbler walks of life. And as for chil- 
dren — their name would seem to be legion ! Dozens 
of poor mothers have babes in their arms with 
three, four, five and in one case eighti other little 
ones clinging to their shabby skirts. A sad sight, 



52 The Spirit of Italy 

truly, its pitifulness intensified when one realizes 
all its meaning! 

When Italy declared war the Austrian authori- 
ties immediately ordered all Italians out of Trieste 
and Pola. According to the stories the refugees 
tell, they were hustled off to the trains of cattle cars 
prepared for them. They barely had time to gather 
up a few wraps to supplement the garments they, 
were wearing. High and lowly were treated alike. 
There was no respect of persons. All were Italians 
— "traitors." The ladies of a prominent family 
were returning from a party when the police noti- 
fied them they must leave. They were not even 
allowed to change their evening gowns! 

To Leibnitz, near Gratz, were taken all these 
"undesirables." There a huge camp of concentra- 
tion is established. The Italians were housed to 
the number of three hundred each in barracks evi- 
dently constructed for the purpose. All had to 
sleep on straw. Men, women and children are said 
to have been mixed indiscriminately. The food 
consisted of coffee without sugar in the morning ; a 
dish of potatoes and cabbage at noon and coffee 
with four ounces of bread at night. 

Many young children and women became ill. 
Several infants died. All the prisoners could learn 
about the war was that the Italians were being 
steadily defeated by the Austrians; that Venice 
was captured and that the Austrians were on their 
way to Milan. 



The Spirit of Italy 53 

So things continued until last week the United 
States Minister in Switzerland received word 
from Ambassador Penfield in Vienna of the pro- 
posed repatriation of the interned Italians not 
qualified for fighting purposes. When the latter 
were told to prepare to leave Leibnitz they were in 
entire ignorance of their fate. 

"Where are we going?" some of them asked the 
Austrian soldiers. 

"We don't know," was the reply. "Perhaps you 
are going to Poland, perhaps to Hungary." 

One can imagine the leavetakings from husbands, 
fathers and brothers who had to stay behind. Many 
wives begged to be allowed to remain, but the order 
to depart was inexorable and admitted of no excep- 
tion. Several days the train traveled — this time, 
thanks to the interposition of Ambassador Penfield, 
the unfortunates had even first and second-class 
cars — through Austria, but few of them knew 
where they were going until the train stopped at 
Buchs, on the Austro-Swiss frontier. 

There the Swiss Ked Cross lavished its attention 
on the refugees, and all the way through the repub- 
lic their wants were provided for generously. Ar- 
rived at Chiasso, on the Italian frontier, they are 
met by the Como Ked Cross Committee and great 
is their joy to find themselves once again on Italian 
soil. As they come into Milan the local Ked Cross 
and half a dozen other benevolent organizations 
take them to the big school and asylum buildings 



54 The Spirit of Italy 

near the station, give them everything they want to 
eat and provide clothes for those who need them. 

Just now they are the one thought of this busy, 
commercial city, which, like New York, may at 
times seem selfish, but has shown on this occasion 
that it has quite as much heart as energy. Some 
of the refugees may remain in Milan, but most of 
them are being sent as quickly as possible to the 
cities and provinces in which they have relatives. 
What causes most general happiness among them 
is to find they can get nice white bread in Italy 
after the months and months of "war bread" which 
has been their fare in Pola and Trieste. 



^5^ ^^ 



Newspaper correspondents are having no easier 
time in "getting to the front" with the Italian army 
than they have had elsewhere in Europe. General- 
issimo Cadorna, backed up by the government, is 
determined that the outer world shall know as 
little as possible about his movements until he is 
good and ready to take it into his confidence. And 
no one here, even the newspapers, greedy as they 
are for news, questions the justice of his attitude. 

By this time, I am sure, America has learned to 
appreciate the qualities of the Italian Commander- 
in-Chief. Like the great Joffre— with whom he is 
being compared — he is a man of few words and 
great determination. The nation has entire confi- 
dence in his wisdom and ability. His official com- 



The Spirit of Italy 55 

muniques are models of terseness and restraint. 
He never reports the occupation of a new strategic 
point until the occupation has been "consolidated." 
In several instances it was known "unofficially" in 
newspaper offices that such and such an occupation 
had taken place. But it was only days afterward 
that General Cadorna announced the fact, not the 
faintest allusion to which the newspapers in the 
meanwhile dared print. The occupation had not 
been "consolidated," and in General Cadorna's 
opinion till then it was not tin fait accompli. 

Naturally this gives weight to the official an- 
nouncements from General Headquarters and for- 
tifies the spirit of calm assurance that prevails all 
through Italy, again astonishing the American and 
Anglo-Saxon who, however, are realizing that the 
Latin people are far from being in a state of ner- 
vous decadency. 

General Cadorna, I am told, knows the Trent and 
Trieste country like a map. On several occasions 
during the Austrian military manoeuvers in that 
region in recent years he and his friend and co- 
laborer, General Porro, have followed the Austrian 
troops and studied the territory disguised as ped- 
dlers. This sounds like a fanciful story, but I had 
it from a very reliable source. 

^^ j®~ ^^r 

Coming back to the "war correspondents" : Most 
of them are "interned" at Verona — a two hours' 
run from here. Verona, one of the keys to Northern 



56 The Spirit of Italy 

Italy, with its wonderful Roman arena, rival of the 
Colosseum, once residence of the Ostrogoth Theo- 
doric, home of the Montagues and Capulets, of 
Romeo and Juliet, is now a vast barracks. Everv- 
where the gray-green uniform which gives such a 
trim and tidy appearance to the Italian soldier of 
every rank ! One would think that all Italy's army 
had been concentrated within those fortifications, 
the renewal of which was started by the Austrians 
early in the last century, little thinking they ever 
would be put to their present service. 

Here it is, in Verona, that you find newspaper 
men of almost every nationality except Turk, Ger- 
man or Austrian, all awaiting some fortunate 
opportunity of at least getting a little nearer to the 
scenes of action. Other civilian strangers are 
chieflv business men interested in armv contracts. 
Every hotel is packed and it is almost impossible to 
find a place to sleep in a private house. Verona 
never knew such times. But woe betide the stranger 
who, failing to find a bed in a hotel or inn, attempts 
to sleep in the open ! Off to the station house he is 
taken by the patrol, and in the morning, unless he 
can satisfy the Commandant General Gobbo that 
he has a very good excuse for being in Verona at all, 
he may have to stay behind prison bars for a week 
or more before he is put on a train and sent where 
he really belongs. 

During their open hours eating places of all sorts 
ore kept so busy they find difficulty in getting sup- 
plies, I told you about the Verona wine I found in 



The Spirit of Italy 57 

Venice. Fortunately, I understand, there is plenty 
of that still on hand ! 

War and music! They're not unrelated. What 
about the "Marseillaise/' "Die Wacht am Rhein," 
"A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonighf'and "Tip- 
perary?" But I don't want to discuss the Muse of 
Mars. I leave that to Brother Krehbiel. I want, 
however, to call attention to the views of Adriano 
Lualdi, a prominent Italian writer on music, who, 
to my mind, strikes a chord to which every lover of 
music in America should respond. 

"Music," says Signor Lualdi, "is the art that 
always has been in the advance guard of our 
national movements, but with us it has been suffer- 
ing of recent years from the same malady that has 
afflicted the entire human race and of which we 
hope this war will prove the cure. A period of 
musical decadence in Italy, said some; of transi- 
tion, said the wiser. 

"Our young composers have not been lacking in 
vitality, in enthusiasm, in lofty aspiration. But 
they have been deceived and have deceived them- 
selves. They have seen the works of modern com- 
posers of Germany and France applauded by snobs 
who neither understood nor enjoyed what they were 
listening to, but applauded because the works pre- 
sented to them were from the other side of the Alps 
— noisy, ugly, tiresome, coarse, vulgar. And our 
young composers, instead of following the dictates 



58 The Spirit of Italy 

of their own Italian artistic souls and consciences, 
instead of giving us their own sincere thoughts, 
have permitted their work to be unduly influenced 
by French impressionism, Straussian hypertrophy 
or the semi-Orientalism of the Slavic school. 

"The crisis in our musical art had to come. Now 
it has come, with violence. While hoping that this 
year will see the glory of our arms, I trust it will 
witness also the renaissance of our art. This is a 
war in defense of our nationality. Italian artists 
should be nationalists. 

"We have heard attentively the works of foreign- 
ers, have applauded the good things — and even the 
ugliest, because they were signed by a foreign name. 
Well and good ! But the evil begins when we try 
to imitate the imported goods. No one today could 
possibly confound modern German with modern 
French music. Yet there is some modern Italian 
music that might easily be confounded with the 
German or French school. This should not be. 
Italian composers should compose Italian music^ 
Why should they remain in slavery to the stranger? 

"The time is ripe. May this holy war not only 
give us back our just geographic frontier, but also 
define clearly the domain of our national art, which 
should have its own accent, its own character, its 
own strength, and should reject disdainfully as 
alms unsought every taint of barbarism." 

In other words, Signor Lualdi might say: "O 
for a Verdi of the twentieth century !" 

And every one of us will say : "Amen !" 



The Spirit of Italy 59 

While the Socialistic Popolo d } Italia of Milan is 
making the same sort of campaign against the 
"embusques" and the "riformati" (those who 
escape military service for any physical cause, 
big or little) that Clemenceau did in his paper in 
France, no fault can be found with the example of 
one of the sons of the Duca D'Aosta, who joined 
the cavalry and is serving at the front as a private. 

I saw him a few weeks ago in the Galleria here 
with his mother — who is tireless in her Red Cross 
work — and a younger brother, who is at the naval 
school. He is a likely young fellow, well put up, 
and promises to give a good account of himself. He 
cleans his own horse and asks no favors. In fact, 
he is suffering because of his rank, for a few days 
ago he deported himself so brilliantly in an action 
that had he been simply Giuseppe Sartorini he 
would have been made Corporal on the spot. 

Italians with Teutonic names are having a hard 
time of it. Sometimes they find difficulty in con- 
vincing their fellow townsmen that they are not 
"Tedeschi." A lot of them held a meeting the other 
evening in Milan to discuss the question of chang- 
ing or modifying their patronyms. One suggestion 
was to put the syllables "ita" before their original 
names. For instance, turn Stein into Itastein. 
They are thinking it over. 

Today I find another suggestion in a newspaper 



60 The Spirit of Italy 

— the simple translation of the German name into 
the Latin equivalent, the following examples being 
submitted: Feldman becomes Campagnoli; 
Strauss, Strozzi ; Falk, Falconi ; Wassermann, Dell 
Aqua; Bauer, Contadini: Wurm, Del Verme; and 
so on. 

However, so much red tape is necessary here to 
have one's name changed that the war in all proba- 
bility may be over before Signor Wurm can be 
transformed into Signor Del Verme and Signor 
Wassermann, I venture to predict, will still be driv- 
ing the Wassermann wagon long after the Peace 
Treaty has been signed. 



The Spirit of Italy 61 



VI. 



Interview of the Paris Journalist, Louis Latapie, 
with the Pope — Discussion of Its Authenticity 
and Effect in Italy — Endeavors of Benedict 
XV. to Remain "Neutral" and Be an Italian at 
the Same Time — Bitterness of the Anti-Clerical 
Press — War and the Priesthood. 

Milan, Friday, June 25, 1915. 

VEEY good Catholic believes that in mat- 
I* ters of faith the Pope is infallible. 

There is one thing, however, about 
which Benedict XV's judgment is quite 
as fallible as the judgment of many an- 
other man eminent in public life — just 
how an interview with a newspaper reporter will 
look when his words are reproduced in cold type. 

Louis Latapie, of the Paris Liberte, who achieved 
this newspaper "scoop," certainly has won the Iron 
Cross of Journalism. In newspaper circles in Italy 
the genuineness and textual accuracy of his now 
world-famed interview with the Pope are not ques- 
tioned. Furthermore, I have talked with a jour- 
nalist who was with Monsieur Latapie in Rome 
before and after the interview, to whom his French 
colleague gave an account of his talk with the Pope 
which coincided in every detail with the report of 
the interview as printed. But the trouble with the 




62 The Spibit op Italy 

interview as it was first published in Italy by the 
Corriere della Sera, one of the most enterprising 
newspapers of the country, was that it was entirely 
lacking in color, so to speak. Nothing was given 
but the bald questions and answers. It read like 
the stenographic report of the examination of a wit- 
ness before a Congressional investigating com- 
mittee. 

It told what the Pope said, but did not tell just 
how he said it ; and doubtless recognizing this fact, 
the Vatican felt justified in saying through its 
organ, the Osservatore Romano, that While "sub- 
stantially correct," the interview as published con- 
tained "inexactnesses." 

So much for the genuineness of the interview; 
now for its effect on Italy. It appeared here three 
days ago, but only in Milan. That it was wired to 
Roman newspapers is a fact. But the censor re- 
fused to permit its being printed that day in any 
city except this one. The title which the Corriere 
put over the article was simply the following: 
"Strange Opinions Regarding the War Attributed 
to the Pope"— "The Pope Talks About the War 
with a French Journalist" — "Relations with the 
Italian Government" — a very temperate headline. 

The censor was more lenient the next day, when 
all the newspapers except the clerical organs 
printed extracts or summaries of various lengths 
with more or less editorial comment, the clerical 
journals either confining themselves to brief refer- 
ences casting doubt upon the authenticity of the 



The Spirit of Italy 63 

interview or remaining silent until the Osservatore 
Romano had something to say. 

^^ ^^r ^^& 

Now, after three days, during which all Italy has 
had a chance to learn all about it, I believe I can 
safely make the statement that the interview has 
made less sensation in Italy than in any other 
country in Europe. This is the opinion I have 
formed after talking with shopkeepers, lawyers, 
street car conductors, manufacturers, barkeepers, 
shopkeepers, policemen and the concierge of my 
hotel. What surprises me, indeed, is the indiffer- 
ence of the masses, high and low, to the Pope's opin- 
ions as reported by Monsieur Latapie. Why, I can 
hardly find an out-and-out clerical ! So far as I can 
judge — and this is my third visit to Italy — the 
great majority of Italian "clericals" don't vote, 
because as yet Italy has not adopted Woman Suf- 
frage. And I am told again and again by liberal- 
minded Italian men that a large proportion of the 
"clerical" leaders are "clerical" not because of re- 
ligious aspirations, but for political profit. 

"It is a pity the Pope talked at all at this time," 
said a prominent Milan publicist to me. "He talked 
freely with Latapie knowing him to be a French 
journalist of Catholic bias. When Latapie pre- 
sented the an ti- German side of the war the Pope 
simply repeated the German replies. He wanted to 
make just as good an excuse as possible for the 



64 The Spirit of Italy 

Vatican's neutrality, and I am sure hadn't any idea 
that a patriotic Frenchman would print anything 
coming from the Pope that would be likely to dis- 
turb the peace of mind of France or its allies. 

"Latapie's journalistic conscience, however, com- 
pelled him to tell everything the Pope said. But as 
far as the effect of the interview on Italy 5 is con- 
cerned, you can tell your friends in America that it 
really amounts to nothing. We all know that there 
are powerful German influences in the Vatican — 
have always known it. Strange to say, one of the 
most potent Germanophile cardinals is a Hollander 
— Cardinal Van Rossum. The idea of the Tem- 
poral Power is still cherished by the Vatican, but 
we all know that the restoration of the Temporal 
Power is impossible if Italy's nationality is to re- 
main a fact. Least of all need the Vatican expect 
aid in this direction from the Lutheran Pope in 
Berlin, His Holiness Guglielmo II. As for poor 
old Cecco Beppo of Austria — well, you know what 
all Italians think about him. He really doesn't 
count any more." 

Apparently the only persons in Italy who have 
been really disturbed by the Papal interview are 
the "clericals" and — the Pope himself. No doubt 
that Italy's "fighting blood is up." This is a dead- 
in-earnest war as far as she is concerned. Every 
Italian feels that the nation's freedom is at stake 
When men get their "fighting blood" up, to use the 



The Spirit op Italy 65 

old-fashioned Methodist expression, "they lose their 
religion." That's precisely the case here. I've 
talked with a Genovese who knows the Pope's fam- 
ily in Genoa very well, and another who, as a stu- 
dent in Bologna, knew him when he was Bishop of 
that city, and both had no hesitation in expressing 
their entire confidence in the patriotism of Bene- 
dict XV. I told you in a former letter that he had 
half a dozen nephews and cousins at the front, and 
I also told you how Erzberger, the Dernburg of 
Italy, was treated. 

Only a few days before the interview appeared 
the Pope received Monsignor Bartolomasi, who 
had just been appointed Chaplain-General at head- 
quarters, with rank of Major-General of the Italian 
army. His Holiness, according to eye-witnesses, 
was very much moved as the Monsignor took his 
leave. There were tears in his eyes and in his voice, 
it was said. 

"Depart," said the Pope, as he gave the Mon- 
signor Major-General his blessing, "with the good 
conscience that yours is a most lofty mission. In 
the name of God bear to the battlefield all the ben- 
edictions of the Pope." And as Monsignor Barto- 
lomasi was about to go the Pope threw his arms 
around his neck and embraced him warmly. 

Quite a human being, is Benedict XV. He re- 
members old friends, too, for when one of them 
from Genoa was received by him recently, and mak- 
ing humble obeisance, proceeded to address him 
as "Your Holiness," Benedict, with a Genovese 



(>6 The Spirit of Italy 

twinkle in his eye (more canny than the Scotch are 
the Genovese ! ) , remarked : 

•'Tut! Tut! Carissimo Giovanni! We used to 
'thee-and-thou' each other in Genoa. Let's do so 
still. Besides, you are not like some of those rich 
Genovese who, because our family was so poor, used 
to turn up their noses at me in my youth, but are 
ndw so anxious to do me reverence since I became 
Pope." 

This is authentic. And this and the Monsignor 
Bartolomasi incident indicate that Benedict XV. 
has a heart. Surelv it must be an Italian heart ! 

m 

^^p ^? ^5> 

Of course, the utterance of the Pope could not be 
ignored by the Socialist press — the most anti-cleri- 
cal of all. In the Popolo d' Italia I find an article 
entitled "The White Amulet." It is not very rever- 
ential, but I give it as an interesting "document." 
It is as follows : 

"The frail old man who from the Vatican chamber 
follows the furious gallop of the imperial horses — 
he with the white amulet which every good Chris- 
tian wears between his skin and his shirt to open 
tomorrow the azure doors of Paradise, has spoken 
sacred and Christ-like words which we gather into 
a fragrant bouquet to lay them — when it is possi- 
ble — at the feet of the Cathedral of Rheims. God 
is for peace. Can the Germans be against peace 
and against God! 

"This good old man before thinking of the mar 



The Spirit of Italy 67 

tyred Christians has thought of the interests of the 
Holy See. These interests are serious. Belgian 
and French priests were ferociously shot against 
the walls of their churches, hut the Pope cannot 
speak one word of pity or censure because — the 
Russians also shot priests! 

"The women of Belgium were subjected to the 
beastly brutality of the German soldiers; the chil- 
dren were martyred, houses burned down, men mas- 
sacred ; but the Pope could not risk the least expres- 
sion of horror because 'the sisters of seven religious 
convents declared that they could not cite a single 
case of violence in their congregations, which were 
protected by the Virgin or some saint.' 

"Alas! the poor mothers who picked up from 
pools of blood their little ones with their hands cut 
off, they were not 'protected by the Virgin or some 
saint.' The Cathedral of Rheims falls stone after 
stone, statue after statue, altar after altar ; the Ger- 
man bombs bound into it, screaming, tearing it 
asunder more than the spirit of steel of Luther ever 
disfigured the aerial Church of Rome! Gazing 
upon this smoke, these howlings, these stones still 
burning like the bones of some dead giant, the occu- 
pant of the Vatican replies that he cannot pass 
judgment — the Vatican is not a court and does not 
pronounce sentence. No; the Vatican is only the 
modest office of a judicial peacemaker! 

"But this is not all. The Lusitania is sunk. 
Women and babies, non-combatants, are swal- 
lowed by the sen; by the insatiable maw of the 



68 The Spirit of Italy 

ocean their tender white flesh is devoured. Not a 
cry escapes from the heart of the old man who is 
thinking of the interest of the Holy See. No, he 
simply retorts with another question: <Do you 
think that this blockade which starves millions of 
innocent human beings is inspired by sentiments 
any more humane?' 

"A cross of merit for him, too, O, blond sire of 
Germany ! A cross of merit for him as well as for 
the commander of the assassin submarine! He 
deserves it ! But Germany does not put too much 
faith in the marvelous virtue of the white amulet 
which just now she hangs in desperation to her 
neck. Out for ruin, Germany shall have ruin. God 
wishes it and does not wish it. His representative 
on earth defends her and does not defend her. The 
amulet has lost its charm. Other hands will seize 
the throat of this Lutheran friend of the Pope and 
compel him to put his knees to the ground. Ger- 
many will spit blood, O peacemaker exile of the 
Vatican !" 

Turning to the Resto del Carlino of Bologna, a 
liberal paper whose editorial columns enjoy a spe- 
cial respect among the serious-minded Italians 
(Bologna is one of the oldest university towns of 
the world and a sort of rival of Boston), I find 
these comments: 

"The interview says nothing new; nothing that 



The Spirit of Italy 69 

was not to be expected, as it is known to all who 
are in touch with Vatican politics that the Pope has 
been maintaining an attitude of watchful waiting 
and that he would not be slow to advance his claims 
as soon as the opportunity offered itself." 

Benedict XV. , the writer of the foregoing says, 
has chosen to abandon the policies of Pius X., 
whose idea it was that the Church should adopt 
moral means to achieve its final victory over the 
State, which to him was synonymous with Kation- 
alism. The new Pope, on the other hand, is dream- 
ing of a political solution of the so-called "Roman 
Question," a contractual solution which could 
never be anything more than "an expedient piece 
of humbug." 

"He is thinking of himself," this critic continues, 
"not of the Catholics, not of religion, not of the 
crises with which the modern conscience is strug- 
gling. He wants the guarantees of the Holy See 
internationalized, which would resolve nothing, 
because the universal principles of the Church 
would be equally violated; for the Papacy still 
would be descending to a compact, to a compro- 
mise. The Church under the tutelage of the States 
of Europe would be exposing to a vastly wider 
sphere the same interests and difficulties which it 
encounters today in its relations with the Italian 
State. Its independence would be considerably les- 
sened by its obligation to the States which assured 
its guarantees and which would use its influence in 
their internal politics to silence Catholic opposi- 



70 The Spirit op Italy 

tion. It would be the end of Catholic democratic 
initiative." 

The writer adds that although Benedict XV. has 
assumed the heritage of Leo XIII., hostility toward 
the Italian State, seeking, like Servia or the other 
Balkan governments, to profit from the present 
European confusion, any attempt in such a sense 
will be frustrated at its first indication. 

"It will be enough," are the closing words, "to 
remember Francesco Crispi and occupy the Vati- 
can militarily the day the Pope attempts to set a 
snare for Victorious Italy." 

It may be repeated here that it is widely believed 
in Italy that the Pope would have left Rome for 
Switzerland a month ago had he been sure he could 
come back. 



You can see from these newspaper extracts how 
very plainly they discuss Pope and Church in this 
country. Everything considered, it is very aston- 
ishing this indifference to the Church in a great 
part of Italy. To me it seems that the clergy are 
chiefly to blame. Even in Southern Italy, in 
Naples, around Sorrento, nine men out of ten with 
whom you talk speak disrespectfully not of the 
Church, but of the priests. This is not so in the 
France of today. 

The average priest is regarded in Italy as an 
idler, as a man who has chosen the cloth as a trade, 



The Spirit of Italy ?1 

and an easy one at that. I say this with all respect 
to the Catholic Church, for I am sure that every 
sincere Italian Catholic will bear me out. Their 
eyes open when I tell them that an American Cath- 
olic youth who decided to study for the Church as 
he would for a professional career would be re- 
garded with contempt. 

Well, perhaps this war will effect a spiritual 
change in Italy as it is doing in France. Priests 
are not exempt from military duty here except 
when at the head of a parish. They say that today 
there are twenty thousand of them — many of them 
volunteers — already in uniform. The experience 
will go a great way toward making real men of 
them. Who knows but that the survivors of these 
twenty thousand fighting priests may not be the 
means of taking the Roman Church out of politics, 
of re-establishing the masses of the clergy in the 
respect and esteem of the intelligent population, of 
settling once and for all the question of Temporal 
Power by winning a spiritual supremacy over the 
hearts and some of this liberty loving people, whose 
most patriotic statesmen today uphold the doctrine 
of Cavour, the Father of Modern Italy — "a Free 
Church in a Free State." 

And just to show that I am impartial, let me call 
attention to this fact, so little known in America, 
that there is another national Church in Italy be- 
sides the Roman Church. It is the Waldensian 



72 The Spirit op Italy 

Church, which has an organization — a very modest 
one — all over the peninsula. It has preserved its 
apostolic simplicity through the centuries and 
weathered many a storm of persecution, political 
quite as much as religious. I talked with a Walden- 
sian pastor even in clerical "Venice" — a charming, 
cultured, sincere follower of the Nazarene. Leav- 
ing him, I asked myself why my good Methodist 
and Baptist and other Protestant friends in Amer- 
ica were spending so much money sending mission- 
aries to proselyte in Italy when right here is this 
centuries-old Church of the people that preaches 
the same evangelicism that they do and certainly 
must know and understand the Italian mentality 
as they never can. Why not send the Missionary 
Sunday collections to it and keep the American 
Protestant missionaries on the American side of 
the Atlantic for evangelical work in the American 
slums? 



The Spirit of Italy 73 



VII. 



Vittorio Emanuele HI. Proves Himself a Truly 
National King — Always Hero of the Man on 
the Street — Not Afraid of the Smell of Gun- 
powder — Stories About Him from the Front. 

Milan, Wednesday, June 30, 1915. 

EMOCRAT-REPUBLICAN as I am and 
as every American should be, neverthe- 
less of one thing I am convinced — that 
Italy needs no change in its present 
form of government so long as Vittorio 
Emanuele III. reigns as King. The 
present war has demonstrated this proposition 
more clearly than ever. Vittorio Emanuele III. is 
the idol of the people. He represents the people. 
He is the people's spokesman. He seeks to, and 
does, voice their sentiments just as sincerely and 
effectively as does President Wilson in these trying 
hours of Italy's history and the history of the 
United States. He is truly a national sovereign. 

I say he is the idol of the people. By that I mean 
that today he is the idol of all the people. Ever 
since he came to the throne he was the idol of the 
common (forgive that word, so mn- American, but 
which I use in its, may I say, mediaeval sense) peo- 
ple. They liked him from the beginning because of 
his simplicity, his honesty, his genuine interest in 




74 The Spirit of Italy 

their advancement and well being. They were de- 
lighted when he got rid of all the social parasites 
of the Quirinal; when he did away with the gaudy 
functions which were only an excuse for aristo- 
cratic idlers to waste their time in mutual admira- 
tion; when he fitted up a simple villa on the out- 
skirts of Eome in which to live like a simple citizen 
of a real republic with two or three domestic ser- 
vants to attend to the roval familv's dailv wants, 
while he devoted his leisure hours to the study of 
the economic and social needs of his country. 

Yes, the "common people" of Italy understood 
their King. They realized that he was trying to 
feel just what they felt, and, like a true patriot, he 
knew that the future greatness of the nation de- 
pended upon the protection of the interests of just 
these "common people," which Abraham Lincoln 
said "God must love so much because he had made 
so many of them." 

But the Italian aristocracy, the "upper classes" 
(dash that expression!), they have not felt any too 
cordially toward their sovereign. "He's always 
been considered rather cold, you know," said an 
excellent but titled Italian gentleman to me. 
"Rather distant, so to speak. Doesn't get very close 
1o us." \ 

I didn't say so, but I understood what he meant 
by "us." It was the aristocracy. But the street 
car driver and the fish dealer in the Milan market 



The Spirit of Italy 78 

and the old farmer with whom I talked working in 
his little field ten miles out of Milan told a dif- 
ferent story. All three of them had seen the King 
and Queen at the Milan Exhibition a few years ago, 
and all three of them told me about the King at 
Messina and at Avezzano, and the fish woman told 
me how simply the King bore himself amid all the 
foreign functionaries at the exposition and how dis- 
appointed all the fine ladies of high Milan society, 
who had decked themselves out in their most splen- 
didly new Paris toilettes, were to see Queen Elena 
appear in a simple street frock that might have 
been worn by any tidy young department store girl 
in Milan. 

Came the question of intervention. Powerful 
and insidious were the influences at work all over 
Italy against war. Secrets are coming out now 
that were hid for months and months. The United 
States had its Dernburg. Italy had dozens of them. 
Yet in spite of all this, in spite of the! one-time 
omnipotence of Giolitti, the heart and soul of the 
"common people" of Italy were for intervention in 
the war of nations on the side of France and Eng- 
land and for the incorporation into the national 
territory of "unredeemed Italy" — Trent and 
Trieste. 

As every one knows, it was the King who settled 
the question, defying his brother monarchs. Wil- 
helm and Francis Joseph. And he didn't wait a 
moment after signing the mobilization decree, but 
off to the front at once went he as Commander-in- 



76 The Spirit of Italy 

Chief of the Armies of Italy, turning over the 
ordinary affairs of State to his uncle. Then it was 
that even the aristocrats (who are pretty good 
sports as a rule) exclaimed in Italian what might 
be translated into Broadwayese: 

"Well, our little King is the 'stuff' after all, be- 
lieve me!" 

So it happened that when I was talking today 
with my titled friend (who, by the way, is very 
restive because he can't go to the front for at least 
two weeks) sought to impress upon me that the 
past weeks have seen a great change of feeling (he 
meant in his class, of course) toward the head of 
the State, and he could find no terms too eloquent 
in which to sing the praises of Yittorio Emanuele 
III. 

Nor has this "going to the front" of the} King 
been a "bluff" or a "pose." Never has any one 
accused Yittorio Emanuele III. of being a poseur. 
He detests show. He drives through Rome with the 
simplest possible equipage. If he doesn't exhibit 
himself more frequently it is because he abhors just 
those theatrical effects which are so dear to Wil- 
helm Hohenzollern. Strange, too, for one would 
expect a King of Italy, a country so steeped in 
symbolism, so devoted to spectacle, to be the one to 
cater to that taste rather than the Emperor of a 
people whose mentality is so entirely different. 
Nevertheless so it is. And when it was announced 



The Spirit of Italy 77 

that Vittorio Emanuele had "gone to the front" 
Italy knew that her King would not have an attack 
of sneezing when he smelled gunpowder. 

And "at the front" he is, for every day come 
stories to the newspapers, mostly in private letters 
of soldiers, who tell what they see of the little 
King's movements — not just where he is or has 
been, for that is forbidden, but of the things he 
does and says and dares. 

"Your Majesty," said an officer approaching him 
during the first week of the war, "permit me to sug- 
gest that you retire from this point ; you are expos- 
ing yourself to danger." 

"Well, I'm not the only soldier in danger," re- 
plied the King, who remained just where he was 
until he had seen all he wanted to see. 

His gray auto whirls away. At the bend of the 
shady road three little girls are standing. A tire 
bursts. Soon it is known it is the King's motor. 
The little girls run off, gather huge bundles of wild 
flowers. While the King is watching the new tire 
being adjusted one of the little peasant maids tim- 
idly approaches him. 

"Your Majesty ! These are flowers of Italy !" 

The King accepts them graciously, pats each 
little tot on her cheek and cross-questions them on 
their school lessons (a cross-questioner, is Vittorio 
Emanuel III.). 

The repairs made, off goes the machine with 
lusty peasant cheers for the royal occupant. Two 
days later the auto returns by the same road. The 



78 The Spirit of Italy 

King stops it at the bend. Where are the little 
girls? Oh, yes! here's one of them! But she must 
call her companions. She does ; and when all three 
come forward to the gray automobile — less timidly 
than before — to each the King hands a box of bon- 
bons with the royal arms so beautifully decorating 
the top. Imagine the delight of these youngsters! 
Imagine the happiness which Italy's Royal Demo- 
crat also experiences! 

When conditions in the mountains demand it the 
King abandons the motor car and mounts a horse. 
Often he dismounts and does a bit of strenuous 
climbing. He's not afraid of physical effort. He 
likes to see the Alpini — the Alpine soldiers, those 
fellows with the little feathers in their slouch hats 
that Garibaldi so trusted at work. Two of these 
fine fellows were talking about the King being 
somewhere near the other day. 

"I hope he'll come this way," said one of them, 
"I'd like to see him." 

"And you can," said a voice from behind. 

They turned quickly to see a little General with 
an alpenstock. At attention immediately! 

"Never mind that," said the King. "Save all 
your ceremony for the enemy." 

"And then," said the soldier who wrote the story 
of the incident to his parents, "His Majesty gave 
us each a cigar — of course I haven't smoked mine." 



The Spirit of Italy 79 

Nothing unusual for the King to lunch with the 
rank and file. Another soldier, a bersagliere, writ- 
ing home, tells how His Majesty had his lunch ham- 
pers opened while an entire company sat around 
him on the grass. Next to the King was the letter 
writer, a corporal. The King addressed a remark 
to him. He rose to salute, but His Majesty would 
have none of that. 

"Save your strength," said he. "You'll need it 
for better purpose. By the way, Colonel, have you 
another box of those biscuits? I think these boys 
would like to try them." 

Just then the roar of the cannon was heard. 

"They're at work beyond the Isonzo," remarked 
the King. "Get ready for action, my bersaglieri! 
We'll need your bayonets within less than an hour." 

The regiment was in fighting shape in short 
order. The King looked them over with pride. Be- 
fore starting every man wanted to present arms to 
his sovereign and to each he spoke a word of en- 
couragement. At last all was ready. 

"Forward, my boys!" said the King, giving the 
command. "Let's give the Austrians another les- 
son. Show them the value of the bayonets of the 
soldiers who fight in the name of Savoy! For- 
ward !" 

And with a yell such as the Louisiana Tigers 
might have uttered, off dashed the bersaglieri down 
the hill to give the enemy a dose of cold steel, 



80 The Spirit of Italy 

Another day when the King was on the eastern 
front a soldier approached him: 

"Your Majesty !" 

"Speak up." 

"I am from Gorizia." 

"Well what of it?" 

"Why, Gorizia is still Austrian. I was an Aus- 
trian soldier, but I deserted. Now I'm a volunteer 
in the bersaglieri. I'm going to the front for the 
Italy that is yours and that is not yet ours. 
Gorizia is waiting for you. When will it see the 
tricolor? When will it see its new King?" 

Vittorio Emanuele smiled. "Bravo, bersaglieri!" 
he said. "It won't be long before you will present 
arms to your King in Gorizia." 

And so I could go on repeating dozens of inci- 
dents of the King's experiences at the front. Every- 
where he goes he shows the same intelligent, earnest 
interest in what is going on as well as in the sol- 
diers personally. He insists on their being well 
fed, and from all reports the Commissary Depart- 
ment of the Italian Army is most efficient. As for 
sleep, His Majesty can sleep anywhere and get 
along with very little. Even in peace times he is 
up with the lark, while his library lamp often 
burns till long after midnight. 

I had the impudence three weeks ago to address 
as polite a letter as I could compose to the King 
himself requesting an interview with him at the 
front. This request wasn't granted — and no such 
request will be granted during the war— but I had 



The Spirit of Italy 81 

the honor of a most courteous reply on behalf of 
His Majesty from his Adjutant and friend, Lieu- 
tenant-General Brusati, direct from the camp. If 
His Majesty had received me I'm inclined to think 
that his words could have been summarized about 
like this: 

"The Italian nation spoke a month ago. The 
cannon of the Italian army are doing the talking 
now." 



82 The Spirit of Italy 



VIII. 

Life in a Provincial Italian Town in War Time — 
How Como Passes Its Days Without a Tour- 
ist to Be Seen on Its 8 tree's — No Sign of 
Want — A Patriotic Play — A Night At the 
Circus. 

Como, Sunday, July 4, 1915. 

AM a "commuter" — a "commuter" in 
Italy. It sounds so "homey" to write 
that word "commuter" and to write it 
on this day of days in a country in- 
volved in the War of Nations. Every 
American visitor to the Italian lakes 
knows of Como; that is to say that she or he has 
landed in Como and stopped perhaps at my hotel, 
the Metropole, on the west side of the picturesque 
Piazza Cavour, in the evening, had a good night's 
rest and has left the town next morning just as 
early as possible. Como itself really did not count. 
Now, this is not fair to Como. It is entitled to a 
place on the map any time. Just now, to me^ it is 
specially interesting because in it I find a typical 
Italian provincial town, and its life and spirit in 
these times exemplifies the life and spirit of hun- 
dreds of similar communities in this country. It is 
a long way from the front, and aeroplane visita- 
tions on the part of the enemy would involve use- 




The Spirit of Italy 83 

less risk. So that from the point of view of safety 
it seems as little in danger as Kingston-on-the-Hud- 
son or Fort Ticonderoga, on Lake George. 

Evidences of a state of war? O yes! First of 
all on the train coming out; curtains on the win- 
dows ; inquiries as to your identity, destination and 
object of visit ; exhibition of passports and recogni- 
tion of the fact that your attempts to speak Italian 
do not betray a German accent; polite apologies 
and assurance that you are a welcome guest, accom- 
panied by a cordial shake of the hand. At least 
such was my experience, and Fm sure any other 
American would have had the same treatment. 

The one public auto-taxi left in Como takes me 
to the central square — the Piazza Cavour. Every- 
body else who got off the train which first brought 
me here seemed to belong to the town, for they 
either started walking from the station or took an 
electric car. Usually toward the dinner hour the 
Piazza Cavour swarms with strangers. The space 
in front of the hotels and restaurants which sur- 
round it are crowded with diners. Four or five 
thousand tourists come and go daily. Boats big 
and little continually steam in and out of the little 
lake harbor. 

What did I find? This hotel almost the only one 
open and the only individuals who seemed to be 
the city's temporary guests, the hundreds and hun- 
dreds of soldiers, infantry, artillery and Alpine in 
the depot awaiting orders to go to "the front." The 
other patrons of my hotel I discovered to be a jolly 



84 The Spirit of Italy 

Italian nobleman, Count Archinti, and his family, 
who found their villa, several miles over the hills, 
too lonely ; Signora Dabala, wife of a distinguished 
General of Turin; Barone Massola of Genoa, a 
volunteer doing service as a sergeant, and the 
Baronessa, an English woman, and a half dozen 
officers whose wives from Bologna, Milan, Turin 
and Rome were spending the few days with them 
before their campaign work began. 

Naturally in these times my arrival was a sub- 
ject of comment; but Director Zaccheo, who is the 
James B. Regan of Como, accepted me at face value 
and "put me in right" after I had "squared" myself 
with the Police Commissioner. And now I have 
been here nearly two weeks, "commuting" to Milan 
and getting back to Como just as soon as I could, 
for Milan, as I told you, is noisy and modern and 
rather un-Italian, while here is a rare Italian town 
semi-circled by the loveliest of hills and mountains 
and facing one of the most beautiful bodies of water 
in the world. Here, too, is historic ground, and any 
little shopkeeper can tell you about Barbarossa, 
whose rude tower atop a tall hill guards the city on 
the south, and Como's one-time rivalry with Milan, 
and the life and times of the Pope who was born 
here, and can show you where Pliny the elder had 
his summer villa (if he'd staved there instead of 
going visiting to wicked Pompeii he wouldn't have 
lost his life on a certain memorable occasion), and 



The Spirit of Italy 85 

can point witk pride to the monument to Alexander 
Volta, also a native, the Marconi of his day, erected 
by the contributions of the world's telegraph 
operators. 

But if you want to test the patriotic spirit of the 
population just say "Garibaldi!" Why, they can 
wave his red shirt today in Como as never the most 
rabid Reconstructionist "waved the bloody shirt" 
at a Fourth of July Grand Army of the Republic's 
celebration in those days, thank God, so long 
gone by. 

Yes, the red shirt of Giuseppe Garibaldi in these 
tragic hours is brighter than ever in Como. It's 
not a "hurrah" patriotism, either, that discovers 
itself here, for a serious lot of Italians are they of 
this region. The tourist trade is important to the 
hotels, and the shops in and near the Piazza, and 
to the steamboat company, eighty per cent, of 
whose vessels are lying idle as the "Teddy Bear" 
locomotives of the American Railroad companies 
after the so-called "Roosevelt panic." The vast 
majority of Como's forty-two thousand inhabitants, 
however, could get along very well were the world 
at peace, without the tourist trade, for their silk 
and lace industries are immense and many other 
important industries, such as furniture, dyeing, 
shoes and ironwork, also help provide work for the 
masses; but while the manufacturers of silk still 
go on with little diminution, other businesses have 
felt the abnormal times. Yet there seems to be 
little, if any, poverty here; everybody looks well 



86 The Spirit op Italy 

dressed ; grocers, butchers and bakers appear cheer- 
ful, and as yet I have not had a single beggar ap- 
proach me for alms. 

A serious people, you see, and their pride in the 
many souvenirs of Garibaldi and their patriotism 
in the hour of their country's trial are in keeping 
with their general character. 

The other evening a theatrical company came to 
town with a play entitled "Bomanticismo," by 
Gerolamo Eovetta, a well-known Italian dramatist, 
who died four years ago. It is perhaps fifteen 
years old, but it deals with a conspiracy of Maz- 
zini's followers against the Austrians sixty years 
ago, and the opening scene is laid in the old Poultry 
Market Pharmacy in Como — a pharmacy that 
exists today and which existed nearly two hundred 
years ago. (By the way, it has been run for three 
generations by a Guffanti family ; no relation, how- 
ever, to the Guffantis of Seventh Avenue, New 
York.) "Bomanticismo" with its an ti- Austrian 
theme strikes the popular chord these days, and is 
being revived all over Italy, although for years it 
was forbidden in many cities for fear of offend- 
ing Italy's former "ally." Here it was greeted 
with a packed nouse. The actors were neither 
Duses nor Novellis, but the audience gave them 
their strictest attention. No expression of ap^ 
proval or otherwise was heard until the dominant 
government's official in Austrian uniform and 



The Spirit of Italy 87 

wearing Francis Joseph side whiskers entered. 
Then you should have heard the whistles and cat- 
calls from the galleries ! The Bowery couldn't have 
surpassed the derisive demonstration; and when 
the hero, just before the curtain fell, declaimed the 
patriotic oath of Mazzini, the enthusiastic applause 
that followed proclaimed in no uncertain tone the 
heartfelt sentiment of Corno's citizens high and 
low. It was after the close of the play, however, 
that the audience gave most explosive vent to its 
feelings. One of the actors came forward before 
the curtain, and with fine spirit recited a patriotic 
poem by Carducci, every word and punctuation 
point of which seemed to be familiar to those before 
him. 

Too little is known in America about Giosue Car- 
ducci, the great poet of the new Italy, who con- 
tributed quite as much in his way toward the unifi- 
cation of this nation as did Mazzini, Cavour or 
Garibaldi. The silk factory boys and girls in Como 
can tell you all about him. They learn his poems 
iri the public schools. They know that he was a 
Tuscan country boy who had no more advantage in 
early life than they — not so much, indeed, for Italy 
was not Italy in those days. Dear to their hearts, 
to every Italian heart, is the memory of this Min- 
ister of the Muses, this Latin Walt Whitman, who 
dared to voice his inmost thoughts in the wonderful 
language of Dante, defiant of man and devil. And 
the finest public institution in Como today, it 
pleases me to say, is the Instituto Popolaro Car- 



88 The Spirit of Italy 

ducci, started by the Como Pro-Cultura Society, 
built by popular subscription at a cost of a quarter 
of a million francs and ablv conducted on the lines 
of New York's Cooper Institute by President 
Enrico Musa and Secretary Bedetti. With Editor 
Francesco Maratea, of the Provincia di Como, the 
daily morning paper, I attended an organ concert 
in its handsome music hall, given by the eminent 
Italian organist, Enrico Bossi, and I assure you I 
heard some fine organ playing. Maestro Bossi 
would be welcomed in America. As for Carducci, 
he deserves more attention from our students, and 
I suggest that his former pupil at the University 
of Bologna, Dr. Luigi Roversi, editor of the New 
York La Follia, should bestir himself and inaugu- 
rate a Carducci propaganda as a beginning toward 
awakening a greater interest in modern Italian 
literature in the United States. The war is teach- 
ing a lot of Italy's physical geography. We should 
pay a little more attention to its intellectual map. 

Since I have been here battalions of soldiers have 
been leaving every day or two for the front. Many, 
perhaps most of these young men, are from else- 
where than Como. But they are never allowed to 
leave without a sympathetic farewell. Numbers of 
committees of ladies have been formed to see that 
they don't leave empty handed. Countess Archinti 
took me with her committee to see a battalion of 
mountain .artillery depart. She and her com- 



The Spirit of Italy $9 

panions had fruits and sandwiches, and handker 
chiefs and anti-gas masks, and I can't tell you what 
besides, in abundance for all the "boys." The leave 
taking was cordial, but free from sentimentality. 
There were very few tears. I should say the sol- 
diers were robustly cheerful. One of them made a 
graceful and eloquent little speech of thanks — quite 
Latin, of course — to the ladies of Como, assuring 
them that it was with confidence in the justice of 
the cause for which Italy is contending that they 
were going with cheerful hearts to do their duty. 
The whistle blew as he finished his peroration, and 
there was just one big cheer as the train pulled out 
with officers, men, guns, horses and ammunition 
carts. It was a long train, and the cheers lasted 
until the last car turned the bend beyond the 
station. 

Fortunate will be the wounded soldiers who are 
brought to Como for treatment or convalescence. 
One of the first big buildings to be fitted up as a 
hospital is the splendid old sixteenth century pal- 
ace left to the city as a boys' boarding school by a 
certain Cardinal Gallio. It is provided with four 
hundred beds, and a better equipped, more sanitary 
establishment could not be desired. Plenty of light 
and pure air and great height of ceiling. A com- 
mittee of ladies has personally provided a stock of 
linen to astonish and delight the most exacting. 
Only last week the superb villa Olmo, fronting the 
lake about a mile west of Como, was turned over 
to the Red Cross by the Duca Visconti di Modrone, 



90 The Spirit op Italy 

the rich philanthropist and art lover, chairman of 
the Scala Opera House Committee, who pays the 
deficits year after year without a murmur, which 
is also being made ready for its new use. Dozens 
of other fine villas on the lake, with beautiful 
grounds, are also being donated for hospital pur- 
poses. So that I fear the wounded of other belliger- 
ent nations will have good reason to envy the lot 
of the Italian soldier who, put out of combat by a 
bullet or bayonet, is sent to Como to be nursed back 
to health and strength. 

To prove how normally Como's economic life is 
proceeding, let me say that we had a circus in town 
last week — the Circo Equestre Tripolitania of the 
Fratelli Pellegrini — "Spettacolo Eccezionale" — 
"Indimenticabile" — a good, old-fashioned one-ring 
circus that reminded me of the circus I used to see 
when I was a little boy, so many years ago, in the 
County Cavan. I had a "bully good time" at the 
Fratelli Pellegrini's entertainment, and got my 
thirty cents' worth with a little more, too. My seat 
was in the front row, but the trick horse was so big 
and brawny, his legs were so long in comparison 
with the size of the ring, that I had to move back 
to the second line of defense, so to speak, in order 
to escape his volatile heels! Three clowns fur- 
nished the comedy. ( Excuse me ; not "clowns," but 
"pagliacci.") Would you believe it, one of them 
looked like Caruso and the two others like Pasquale 



The Spirit of Italy 91 

Amato and Antonio Scotti. The Caruso chap was 
a little bit of a fellow, about the size of Joe Weber, 
of Weber and Fields fame. Of course, just like 
Caruso, he always "got the worst of it." I'm sure 
the jokes were all from some good old Italian Joe 
Miller Joke Book, for the roars of laughter of the 
crowd proved their antiquity. One of them I really 
understood. 

"That's a horse, you tell me," says the Scotti 
clown to the Amato clown. 

"Certainly, you idiot ; it's a horse !" 

"And what do you call that part of him?" 

"Why, the head, you stupid!" 

"And that?" 

"The tail, you blockhead!" 

"And those four things?" 

"The legs, the legs, you imbecile!" 

"And all horses have four legs?" 

"Certainly, you lunatic!" 

"And asses, too? Do they all have four legs?" 

"Of course they do, you unspeakable ignoramus !' 

"Well, then, will you please tell me why God 
only gave you two?" 

Do you recognize it? And, by the way, it is just 
as good if you make the Amato clown ask the ques- 
tion instead of the Scotti clown. I don't want to 
create any ill feeling. 



92 The Spirit of Italy 



IX. 




Depressing News from Everywhere Except the 
Italian Firing Line — Appeals for Loan Sub- 
scriptions Admit Seriousness of the Hour — 
Italian Socialist Scores German Socialist 
Peace Talk. 

Milan, Tuesday, July 6, 1915. 

ARK hours seem these for the nations 
contending with the German- Austrian- 
Turkish armies. As I go through the 
Italian newspapers this morning it 
brings back memories of those days in 
Paris when von Kluck was almost at 
her gates — the Russians retreating, retreating ; the 
English and French making little, if any, progress 
in the west; the German submarine defiant and 
deadly as ever; the fall of Constantinople still ap- 
parently so remote; the Balkan "neutrals" playing 
fast and loose with the Quadruplice, while Rou- 
mania sells her crops to Germany, while Bulgaria 
provides the Turks with munitions of war, while 
Serbia invades Albania, while the Greek merchant 
marine is making millionaries of its owners carry- 
ing contraband cargoes; while the Swiss Govern- 
ment puts the screws on the Francophile and Italo- 
phile press, and Spain is suspected of providing 
supply depots for German undersea war-craft, 



The Spirit of Italy 93 

The only cheerful items of news an anti-mili- 
tarist can find in print over here today are the brief 
announcements of General Cadorna and Admiral 
Di Revel, of the Italian army and navy. They tell 
of a successful offensive at Carsico, southwest of 
Gradisca, with four hundred prisoners taken, the 
continued effective bombardment of Marborghetto, 
the aerial bombardment of the important railroad 
station of Prvacina and the serious damaging of 
the shipyard at Trieste by an Italian- dirigible. 
Unofnciallv we hear the Italians are in Tolmino, 
but General Cardona is silent on the subject. 

Italy is fully awake to the seriousness of the sit- 
uation for the anti-Teutonic allies. While the cen- 
sorship of the press is most exacting, as far as con- 
cerns military information, great liberty of discus- 
sion in other respects is allowed, although an 
understanding exists that as far as possible partisan 
political controversies shall be avoided. The neces- 
sity of making the new government four and one- 
half per cent, loan ( offered at ninety-five ) a success 
is the burden of daily editorial utterances scattered 
through the columns of the papers and printed in 
boldface type. Here is an example from the Secolo, 
an important Liberal journal of Milan. It is in 
deadly earnest : 

"Today more than ever war involves not only a 
strategic event, but a combined effort on the part of 



94 The Spirit of Italy 

the entire nation. We cannot win with the arms 
and valor of our soldiers alone; it must be by the 
active co-operation of every citizen. 

"You who read this, and know that the soldiers 
are doing their duty, have you done yours? Don't 
be satisfied to wait until others do it ; you would be 
failing in your obligation! Don't be content in 
knowing that others are doing the right thing ; you 
would be doubly culpable ! You, too, must act ! 

"No use to conceal facts, and it would be evil to 
be silent. The trial is not over. The struggle Will 
be bitter! None knows what the future has in re- 
serve. Your country, your own personal interests, 
your family, your friends, all that are dear to you, 
their well beins? is at stake ! 

"What opinion will they form of you if you have 
neglected to do your part in the organization of vic- 
tory, if you have neglected to do what you could 
to prevent a doubtful, unfavorable or even adverse 
result? You will be a traitor to your country, your 
family and yourself! 

"Think of the grave hour that is passing in which 
even your aid is needed. You who do not give your 
physical energy, your blood or your life, you should 
give another force — your money !" 

This is plain talk. The subscription has been 
under way six days — the banks even keep open on 
Sunday — just how it is going I do not know 
officially; satisfactorily, I am told. A very large 
part of the money raised will remain in Italy. The 
Italian Government has not delayed in taking steps 



%je Spirit of Italy 95 

toward mobilizing the nation's industries, and to- 
day a royal decree establishes the fact. This part 
of the country — Lombardy and Piedmont — will be 
kept busy night and day manufacturing munitions 
from now on. The possibilities are great, for no- 
where in the world can power be had so easily. The 
snows of the Alps will furnish it almost without 
limit. Add, then, Italy's ten months of systematic 
preparation- and you will see readily that it is a 
fortunate thing for England, France and Russia 
that her fresh forces have been added to their re- 
sources. 

^K> ^w ^w 

The Kaiser is quoted in today's papers as having 
said the war will be over in October. The state- 
ment is received in Italy with a smile. Already 
they are talking of the coming winter campaign. 
The Kaiser's remark is taken no more seriously 
than the recent loudly advertised manifesto of the 
Haase group of German Socialists in favor of 
peace. 

What impression that peace manifesto made in 
America I don't know. Here it was regarded sim- 
ply as "another stupid German trick" — "a trial 
balloon permitted by the Kaiser." The brief sus- 
pension of the German Socialist paper Yorwaerts 
was characterized as a "love slap" from the War 
Lord. 

Benito Mussolini, editor-in-chief of the Popolo 
d'ltalia, is foremost among the Socialists who all 



96 The Spirit op Italy 

along favored intervention. Thirty-two years old, 
a native of Forli, in the region of Romagna (in 
which not so long ago a Republican revolution was 
threatened, but where now the Republicans are fol- 
lowing the King to the battlefield as enthusias- 
tically as any of their monarchical compatriots) , he 
was educated in Switzerland and qualified to be a 
teacher in the public schools of his native country. 
A man of strong personality, clear of thought, de- 
liberate of speech, to his friends and Socialist fol- 
lowers he is an idol ; to his opponents he is either a 
"dreamer" or "a disturber of economic order." 

Whatever be one's opinion of Mussolini, what he 
says carries weight with the proletariat of Italy, 
which in the majority is far from being as ignorant 
as some Americans have been disposed to think. 
The proletariat of Italy reads the newspapers and 
reads them extensively. 

"Has daily newspaper circulation increased to 
any extent in Italy in the last decade?" I asked my 
friend, Signor Maratea, the Como editor. 

"Increased!" he exclaimed. "Why, my dear sir, 
in ten years newspaper circulation in Italy has 
increased five or six hundred per cent !" 

"What did it?" I inquired. 

"The common people," was his reply. "The pro- 
letariat! You'll hardly find a workman who will 
begin his day's labor until he has read his favorite 
paper." 

To me this speaks volumes. And it will help you 
to realize how little effect on the Italian working 



The Spirit of Italy 97 

man and Socialist the German peace manifesto can 
have when he reads from Mussolini such words as 
these : 

"The Social Democrats tell us that, although 
assailed by preponderant forces, Germany, so far 
victorious over her enemies; Germany, invincible, 
should take the first step toward the restoration of 
peace. Very fine! But we would like to know if 
among the preponderant forces which were the 
aggressors against Germany were Belgium and 
Serbia, and if Germany to show her indignation 
at a blockade intended to famish her people should 
have torpedoed the Lusitania? 

"Note with what Chauvinism they speak of a 
Germany invincible, which, in spite of this, offers 
peace graciously to its enemies whom it could, 
whenever it wished it, crush ! If the people of the 
East and West shall continue to live not politically 
subjects of Germany invincible, let them thank the 
Socialists who forced Germany onto the path — 
never before trod by them — of pacifism. 

"But, no! Peace with Germany invincible? 
Never ! Because it would be a German peace which 
would leave things — after all the blood that has 
been spilt — just where they were before. This 
'invincibility' which you German Socialists, beside 
yourselves with haughtiness, attribute still to Ger- 
many, has been the incubus of Europe for forty- 
three years. If this time the people of the West do 
not succeed in breaking its spell the obsession of a 
Germany invincible will continue to weigh upon the 



98 The Spirit of Italy 

humiliated and tortured consciousness of Europe 
as a perennial menace. 

"The invincibility of Germany, indeed, would be 

*/ f 7 7 

the most tragic destiny that could possibly be con- 
ceived for the human race ! More's the need, there- 
fore, to demonstrate — even at the cost of rivers of 
blood — that Teutonic barbarity is not invincible. 
Therefore/' adds Signor Mussolini, "to the treach- 
erous, deceptive invocation of peace which descends 
from the north, let one unanimous cry reply : 'War 
to the very end! Delenda Ger mania P " 

This is the doctrine that is being preached to the 
Italian masses. The manifesto plainly miscarried. 
It wasn't "made by Krupp," but came from Ger- 
rnany's diplomacy factory. Strange that it should 
appear just about the time Dr. Dernberg got back 
to his Fatherland! 

All doubts as to the attitude of Italian Catholics 
toward the war were set at rest last Sunday — cer- 
tainly in Milan — by the eloquent and patriotic 
discourse of Cardinal-Archbishop Ferrari. Milan 
was invited to pray God to grant victory to- the 
Italian arms at an afternoon service in the famous 
cathedral. The response was a great outpouring — 
not so great as I witnessed at Notre Dame in Paris 
just after the battle of the Marne, but it was a vast 
assembly just the same, for the cathedral is one of 
the largest in the world. 

Yesterday at the town of Cuneo another "patri- 



The Spirit op Italy 99 

otic incident" occurred. It was the emergence of 
Giolitti, who had been keeping out of sight since his 
disastrous attempt to control the government in 
favor of neutrality. As president of the Cuneo 
Provincial Council he had to make a speech in favor 
of an appropriation for the families of the soldiers. 
He did the best he could in the circumstances, but 
to Italian ears just now it didn't ring very true. 
Giolitti is still a "dead one." His is Italy's Bill 
Bryan. 

And while all these exhibitions of patriotic ardor 
are taking place Signor Giulio Gatti-Casazza is 
proceeding calmly and methodically With the 
organization of next winter's season at the Metro- 
politan Opera House in New York. I went with 
him the other afternoon to an audition of ambitious 
young persons whose teachers think they are "ripe" 
for New York honors. I was going to tell you all 
about it, but there is enough sadness in this sad 
world already. Wherefore, silence is golden. 



100 The Spirit op Italy 



X. 

A Flying Trip to Switzerland and Some Impres- 
sions It Left — Sharp Line Evident Between 
German-Swiss and French-and-Italian-Swiss— 
Actual Guarantee of Neutrality. 

Milan, Friday, July 9, 1915. 

I MADE a peaceful invasion of Switzerland 
yesterday. I was anxious to discover if 
the spirit of William Tell was as alive 
across the frontier as is the spirit of 
Garibaldi on this side of the line. Well, 
I am back again it Italy with the con- 
viction that the spirit of Gessler's fearless enemy 
is having some very uncomfortable hours at present 
in the World of Shadows and is finding more or less 
of a rival in the spirit of Frederick the Great. 

This spirit conflict, so to speak, and the material 
disadvantages due to the war of nations by which 
she is encircled, make Switzerland today anything 
but a cheerful country. "The playground of 
Europe'' is deserted by its pleasure-seekers. It 
made no appeal to me on this occasion, and I was 
glad to resume my "commuting" between Milan 
and Como. 

Lugano was my point of destination in Switzer- 
land. It has been figuring in the cable news to a 
considerable extent of late. I'm afraid that all the 




The Spirit of Italy 101 

"news" that is wired from Lugano is not carefully 
"verified/' but the "neutral" correspondent who has 
to make his headquarters there hears many con- 
flicting stories, and he must not be too severely con- 
demned if one day he makes a statement that next 
day he modifies or contradicts. 

Bear in mind that Lugano is in the Canton of 
Ticino, the only Italian- Swiss canton or state, and 
its southern end terminating in the town of Chiasso 
(you've become familiar with that name, too, I'm 
sure) forms a sort of wedge into Italy just as does 
the Trentino district of Austria more to the east. 
When war was declared — Italy's war — Lugano was 
the point for which the fugitive Germans and Aus- 
trians in Italy chiefly headed. The city was filled 
to overflowing with them, and although the vast 
majority of them have sought other refuges in 
Switzerland nearer the German and Austrian fron- 
tiers or in their native lands, thousands are still 
lingering in this popular lake city of hotels and 
villas. 

For a while it was a rather simple matter to cross 
the frontier at Chiasso and get into neutral terri- 
tory. The Italian Government, however, has of late 
adopted stricter measures, so that when I reached 
Chiasso by electric car from Como I had to furnish 
full and convincing proof as to my identity and 
good faith, after which I was courteously permitted 
to pass the barrier. Some others, I noticed, were 



102 The Spirit of Italy 

taken into a little room, where I understood they 
were thoroughly searched before being allowed to 
depart, and a few of them were held for additional 
investigation, for they didn't catch the train which 
was about to start for Lugano a half hour later. 
One man, a Swiss, had fifteen hundred francs in 
silver and paper and some gold. The Italian 
authorities thought it their duty to retain his funds 
for reasons best known to themselves. I was told 
he will get it back "when certain matters are made 
clearer." 

Passing the Italian barrier you cross a sort of no- 
man's-land of about twenty yards, and then you 
pass another barrier guarded by Swiss soldiers, 
solemn-looking young fellows with funny old-fash- 
ioned, toy-soldier hats. Asking the way to the sta- 
tion, I had a reply in English from a corporal. He 
had been a waiter in New York and seemed glad to 
see and talk with an American. He had been in 
service for ten months and was getting very tired 
of it. 

"When the war is over," he remarked, "me for 
New York ! I've had enough of Europe !" 

And he said it as though he meant it. 

Lugano I found wearing a somewhat deserted 
air — in spite of the number of German refugees, 
which I was told still are there, it looked anything 
but prosperous. Villa after villa was closed and 
the hotels remaining open bespoke the absence of 
the floods of American, French, English and Rus- 
sians who usually insure their prosperity. 



The Spirit op Italy 103 

I had hoped to meet one of the most representa- 
tive Italian-Swiss, Emilio Bossi, editor of a Rad- 
ical paper which has more than once been "re- 
proved" for its references to the violation of Bel- 
gium's neutrality — a topic the discussion of which 
is rather discountenanced by the Swiss Govern- 
mental authorities — and a member of the Federal 
Parliament who insists upon his constitutional 
right to address the House in the Italian language. 
Signor Bossi was out of town, but I had the luck 
to find one of his intimate friends, a member of the 
Lugaro City Council, with whom I passed a very 
pleasant afternoon and from whom I got a very 
illuminating expression of opinion as to conditions 
generally in Switzerland. 

"Have the Swiss really any fear that the repub- 
lic's neutrality may be violated?" I asked during 
our conversation. 

"Candidly speaking, I will say that we have had 
some moments of apprehension," was the answer. 
"There exist some intense Germanophiles in Switz- 
erland who might not object to it if they did not 
fear its ultimate consequence, but few of us believe 
that Germany will attempt it. Every sensible 
Swiss, no matter what his sympathies may be, must 
realize one thing: The moment Germany makes a 
move toward the violation of our neutrality the 
French will be justified in entering French Switzer- 
land and the Italians, Italian Switzerland. And, 
my dear sir, what would that mean? It would mean 
the end of the Swiss Confederation; and I'm glad 



104 The Spirit of Italy 

to feel that I can say that I don't believe any Swiss 
outside of a madhouse could entertain so unpa- 
triotic a wish." 

"This talk about the Pope having been invited 
to Switzerland — what about that?" I inquired. 

"Well/' my Lugano friend said, "I'm a igood 
Catholic and I know it has been seriously discussed 
in some clerical circles, but to me it is sheer non- 
sense. All that talk was started by Erzberger and 
his crowd to try to influence us Catholics who don't 
sympathize with Germany, but it has failed com- 
pletely. The matter of appointing a minister to 
the Vatican has been discussed. There might be 
some reason in that because, should the Pope finally 
act as peacemaker, we want to have our national 
interests safeguarded. It is the hope of most Swiss, 
however, that our government may be the final 
intermediary and that the Peace Conference that 
follows the War of Nations may meet on Swiss soil. 

"Meanwhile we are feeling the pressure of hard 
times. The cost of living is steadily increasing, and 
we are about to issue a national loan of a billion 
francs at four and a half per cent. Conditions 
encourage contraband trade, and as Germany is 
naturally our best customer, we have many 'busi- 
ness men' whose German sympathies are based on 
'business' reasons. However, please tell your 
American friends that we are trying hard to be 
'neutral.' " 



The Spirit of Italy 105 

The train on which I had expected to return to 
Como in the evening had been taken off. It was 
after midnight when I reached Chiasso, where I 
found the train stopped. It was raining heavily. 
Chiasso was pitch dark, and I knew there were no 
more electric cars to be had. Finding my way to 
the frontier, the Swiss soldiers let me pass unno- 
ticed. At the Italian barrier I met a corporal and 
two of King Vittorio Emanuele's soldiers, and was 
wondering what chance I had of getting by them 
when one of the privates exclaimed cheerily : 

"Ecco il nostro Americano ! You're getting back 
pretty late from Lugano! What's the matter?" 

I explained to their amusement, adding: "But 
how the devil am I going to get to Como?" 

"Don't worry," replied the corporal, whose name 
was Sbezzi and who certainly was an Italian gen- 
tleman, "I'll find you a carrozza." 

It took him nearly a half hour, but he did it. And 
as I climbed into a two-wheeled wagon behind a 
sturdy little Sardinian horse he shook me cordially 
by the hand, hoped I wouldn't get cold and wished 
me safe home. And what a jolly good ride it was ! 
The driver was a jovial chap and did his best to 
entertain me in a dialect that I couldn't much com- 
prehend, except that he would interrupt his yarns 
every now and then to exclaim in real Italian : 

"Fine horse ! Goes just as fast up hill as down ! 

Cost two thousand lire! Better than automobile!" 

The ride was cheap at two dollars. Besides, I 

was back again in Como — in a country that is not 



106 The Spirit op Italy 

"neutral" and where people are not afraid to ex- 
press their feelings, for they are all of one mind. 

Italy had just had her first shock since "her" war 
began. The sinking of the cruiser Anialfi by an 
Austrian torpedo was no small matter. The morn- 
ing after the announcement was printed in the 
newspapers in black-face type. There was no 
attempt to minimize the disaster. "Fortunately," 
it was announced, "the great majority of the equip- 
age were saved." I was amazed by the calmness 
displayed by all the Italians with whom I talked 
both in Milan and Como and on the train. 

"I hope you will write to America about what 
you have observed on the occasion of this loss to 
our navy," said Count Archinti at dinner time. "It 
is another evidence of the determination of our 
people to let nothing disturb our minds. We went 
into this war fully realizing what it meant and we 
shall follow it unflinchingly to the end. 

"This morning I went to a little village back of 
my home at Cavallasca to attend the funeral of a 
young peasant who lost his life at the front. Vil- 
lagers and peasants from all the 1 country around 
were gathered for the ceremonies. The old father 
and mother, the sweetheart and the older brother 
were the chief mourners. It was a moving sight. 
At the grave the priest made a patriotic address, 
followed by another in like spirit from a civilian 
friend of the dead boy. But there was no loud 



The Spirit of Italy 107 

lamentation, no emotional outbursts. Hardly a 
tear could be seen except in the eyes of the little 
sweetheart. Those simple peasants all knew that 
this is 'our' war, 'their' war, and they felt they were 
making a holy sacrifice as they laid this boy at rest 
on the hillside overlooking their lovely valley." 

While the Count was relating this incident the 
evening paper arrived. It contained a brief tele- 
gram from Holland saying Germany's reply to 
President Wilson was on its way and intimated 
that the German counter-propositions were not 
likely to be satisfactory to the American Govern- 
ment. 

"What does that mean?" asked the Count. 

"I don't know," I replied. "All I can say is 
every true American will stand by President Wil- 
son." 



T 



108 The Spirit of Italy 



XI. 



"A Grand Old Man" — Bon Giuseppe Bernasconi, 
the Garibaldian Priest About to Celebrate His 
Ninetieth Birthday — How He Helped the 
"Liberator" Win a Battle Without Knowing It 
— His Narrow Escape from Excommunication. 

Como, Tuesday, July 13, 1915. 

HIS afternoon I spent an hour with one 
of the most interesting men in Italy. 
No, it wasn't the King, nor General 
Cadorna, nor Prime Minister Salandra. 
Nor was it the Pope — Brother Latapie 
locked the Vatican door on his felloiw- 
newspaper men and threw away the key. 

But if it was neither King nor Pope it was never- 
theless a grand old man who in his long lifetime 
had done his share to establish the House of Savoy 
on the throne of a united Italy and inspire those to 
whom he has ministered for more than three score 
years and ten with a love of the religion of which 
the Pope is chief representative. 

Don Giuseppe Bernasconi is his name — Don Giu- 
seppe, the Prete Garibaldino — the Garibaldian 
priest who next Monday week, July 26, will be 
ninety years old. 

"A doddering old dotard," you say to yourself. 
Anything but that is Don Giuseppe, whose brain 



The Spirit of Italy 109 

is as astir as that of a man twenty years his junior ; 
whose heart is as warm as when he said his first 
Mass away back in that year so memorable in 
Europe, 1848, and whose patriotism is as ardent as 
when he shed his ecclesiastic soutane in 1859 to don 
the uniform of a Cacciatore delle Alpi and follow 
Garibaldi in his campaign against the Austrians. 

Thanks to my colleague, Editor Francesco Mara- 
tea, I discovered Don Giuseppe. Signor Maratea 
yesterday morning printed an entertaining inter- 
view with the venerable warrior priest in the 
Provincia and advised me to make his acquaintance. 

Happening to mention to my favorite tobacco 
dealer, Signor ' Leo Piatti, that I was going in 
search of Don Giuseppe, he immediately became 
interested. "Fve known him since childhood, said 
he. "Let( me go with you. Fm sure you are the 
first American that I've ever heard of going to 
Civiglio and I'd like to present you to Don 
Giuseppe." 

I was only too glad to have his company, and, 
turning over his shop to his wife, off he started with 
me to take the funicular railroad, which landed us 
on the top of Mount Brunate, which was our real 
point of departure. 

It was a delightful three-mile walk along that 
winding mountain road, where at every turn a new 
and if possible more beautiful panorama disclosed 



110 The Spirit of Italy 

itself. A summer shower had passed and the air 
was fresh and sweet with the odor of wild flowers 
and newly mown grass. 

Scores of children were leaving the public school 
as we reached the hamlet of Civiglio, with its nar- 
row, tortuous streets and houses that might have 
existed before the Renaissance. Bright little kids 
of both sexes were they all, and a hasty examina- 
tion of their school books convinced me that they 
are quite abreast of the times in the matter of ele- 
mentary education in rural Italy. 

All knew Don Giuseppe, and we soon reached his 
house — a solid square two-story building. Enter- 
ing a most attractive garden, in which one observed 
both an artistic and practical arrangement of flow- 
ers, fruits and vegetables, with two or three bowers 
shaded with vines, we were greeted at the door by 
the good padre's housekeeper and her assistant. 
Signor Piatti's introduction insured my acceptance 
as a friend, and I immediately found myself in a 
large living room with an alcoved fireplace — a real 
old-fashioned chimney corner — on the side. 

"Well, well," came a soft, musical baritone voice 
from the alcove. "An Americano !" 

Turning, I saw in the shadow the face of an 
apostle — that is, if you can picture an apostle with 
a Gladstonian forehead crowned with silver white 
hair, a Wellingtonian nose, a Napoleonic chin, a 
mouth large, but well shaped and firm in line, and 
two gray-blue eyes that could flash with righteous 



The Spirit of Ital* 111 

indignation, twinkle with humor or melt with 
human sympathy. 

Don Giuseppe had been reclining on a couch, a 
little table filled with books and newspapers at his 
elbow. As he rose to greet me I saw he used 
crutches and that his right leg from the knee down 
had been replaced with a wooden member. He was 
of medium height, but powerful frame, and I could 
realize that truly as report had said he must have 
been "a mighty hunter" in his day. 

"Yes, Don Giuseppe, I am an Americano, and it 
may please you to know that I have seen the house 
in which your soldier leader, Garibaldi, dwelt when 
he took refuge in our land of liberty from his Euro- 
pean enemies. It is a sacred spot to us Americans, 
who cherish the memory of Garibaldi because of 
what he represented." 

Don Giuseppe took me by both hands. "Thank 
you, my son !" he exclaimed ; "it does my old heart 
good to hear you tell me these things at this terrible 
but glorious moment when our army is doing the 
work which will form the last chapter of the his- 
tory of Italy's unification." 

A cup of wine was offered me. "And yours?" I 
inquired of the veteran. 

"I never take either wine or water except at my 
meals, and then it is only a spoonful of wine in a 
goblet of water. Simple living has much to do with 
my health. As you see from my long pipe, I smoke, 
but do so moderately. But I have lived as much m 
possible an open air life, and my passion was for 



112 The Spirit of Italy 

hunting in my earlier years; in fact, until fifteen 
years ago, when this leg had to be amputated be- 
cause of blood poisoning. I've got used to the bit 
of wood, however, even if it does hamper my activ- 
ity. I have a relative who would like very much to 
use the piece of wood that serves as leg to mark my 
final resting place," added Don Giuseppe with a 
chuckle. 

"Tut ! tut ! father !" I exclaimed. "Impossible !" 
"Not a bit of it!" he replied merrily. "He has 
to pay me a legacy left by a brother as long as I live. 
After that he gets it all. Just think what an annoy- 
ance I must be — an old fellow who persists in living 
on and on and wouldn't have the decency to die 
under an operation such as mine when he was 
seventy-five years of age." 

Don Giuseppe chuckled again — not maliciously, 
but so very humanely. Life is just as sweet to him 
as to his younger relative. 

"And how did you come to join Garibaldi?" I 
asked. 

"Why, in 1859 I was a young, robust assistant 
priest at the village of Lenno, near Tremezzo, just 
up the lake. Everywhere was talk of Garibaldi^ 
The village boys were swearing that if war broke 
loose they would volunteer. Vigorous and good 
shot as I was, I felt ashamed that I could not make 
the same resolution. 

"To enlist would mean excommunication for me. 



The Spirit of Italy 11 



•» 



Some days went by, however, and I felt I could 
stand it no longer, and I swore I would go, too. 
Presently a band of volunteers gathered at Como, 
but — would you believe it? — not one of ray com- 
panions of Lenno were there? I alone represented 
the village. 

"The Vicar-General was perplexed when I told 
him I was going with Garibaldi, but when I told 
him I had pledged my word he simply said : 

" 'My son, look well to what you do, and may 
God bless your 

"The good man himself also blessed me, and I 
don't think he was so very much displeased." 

"And Garibaldi — how did you find him?" 

"After chasing after him to Milan, to Genoa, to 
Turin and back to Como," replied Don Giuseppe, 
"I finally reached his Cacciatori delle Alpi near 
Tirano and got my first glimpse of the great leader. 
His appearance is as vivid to me today as it was 
fifty-six years ago. He looked like some pictures of 
the Master that I have seen, with his short light- 
brown beard, majestic though simple air and eyes 
that looked you through and through. 

"He barely noticed me. To Dr. Bertini of the 
ambulance corps I offered myself as volunteer for 
assistance to the wounded. Seeing me in my 
priest's gown and knowing Garibaldi's anti-clerical 
feeling, he hesitated. 

" 'In this dress?' said the doctor. 

"It's all I have," I replied. "If it displeases you 
give me another." 



114 The Spirit of Italy 

"Forthwith I was given the uniform of a sergeant 
of Cacciatori, and for some time took charge of the 
organization of ambulances. But I was not always 
so occupied, and one day, hearing there was fight- 
ing close at hand, and knowing every inch of that 
country, having hunted over it many a time, I took 
a carbine and started to join in the fray. 

"Crossing a wood I discovered that the Austrians 
were occupying a strong position on the edge 
exchanging fusillades with the Garibaldini, who 
were on the road beyond. Without realizing my 
peril I dropped into a hollow and fired ten or twelve 
shots at the rear of the enemy. The latter were 
suddenly panic stricken ; they thought they had 
been outflanked. I had performed an impossible 
bit of strategy. The enemy were demoralized, and 
those who were not killed were either captured or 
driven into a new position." 

One of the precious souvenirs of the campaign of 
1859 preserved in Don Giuseppe's veritable 
Museum of Souvenirs is the medal bearing the bust 
of Napoleon III., one of which was given by the 
French Emperor to every Italian soldier, while in 
exchange Vittorio Emanuele II. gave a similar 
medal with his image to each French soldier. 

"But how about resuming your priestly func- 
tions?" I asked Don Giuseppe. 

"Why, when the campaign was over I presented 
myself to my Vicar-General and told him I was 
ready to return to my parish at Lenno and begged 
him to revoke my suspension. 



The Spirit of Italy 115 

"'My son,' said he, 'the fact is that I've never 
suspended you. Go back to Lenno and don't 
worry.' " 

^w^ ^©^ ^^p 

Back went Don Giuseppe to the discomfort of the 
boasters who had talked so boldly but didn't act. 
Six years later, while he was superintending the 
reparation of an old church, a shooting tournament 
took place at Como under the direction of Gari- 
baldi's famous Lieutenant, Nino Bixio. 

Don Giuseppe couldn't resist his instinct. Down 
to the public square he came. Immediately he was 
besought to try his skill. And he did, with the 
result that he won two prizes! Next day his 
brother clergy were scandalized when Bixio handed 
him as one of the prizes a painting of a pretty 
young girl sentimentally contemplating an engage- 
ment ring on her finger, the memory of which inci- 
dent brought another merry twinkle to his eyes. 

Next year was 1866 and again Garibaldi donned 
his red shirt. He sent word to Don Giuseppe that 
he wanted him with him. "If you don't volunteer 
I'll order your enrollment," said he. "What's the 
use of winning prizes at tournaments if you don't 
make serious use of your marksmanship?" 

So there was another visit to the Vicar-General 
and again Don Giuseppe told his superior of his 
decision. The Vicar-General saw there was no use 
in trying to dissuade him and off Don Giuseppe 
Went, joining the Lombardy Bersaglieri, with 



116 The Spirit of Italy 

whom he fought all through that campaign. When 
it was over he found a new Vicar-General at Como 
— his old! friend was dead — one who was less in- 
dulgent and regarded his case as a very serious one. 

"You've been fighting?" said the Vicar-General. 

Don Giuseppe admitted the fact. 

"And you fired a gun?" 

"Many times," he replied. "How can you fight 
without shooting?" 

"Did you kill anybody?" pursued the Vicar- 
General. 

Don Giuseppe frankly confessed that such had 
been his intention and that he always aimed to kill. 

It looked very bad for the clerical Garibaldino. 
The Vicar-General was silent awhile. Then he 
remarked solemnly that excommunication must 
follow the shedding of Christian blood; conse- 
quently Don Giuseppe must be forbidden to say 
mass. 

But Don Giuseppe's wit was keen. "Then," said 
he, "what do you think my old parishioners will 
say when they hear what you have done to me?" 

"What?" asked the Vicar-General. 

"That Don Giuseppe has been excommunicated 
because he ran to his country's defense." 

"My words," said the priest in recounting the 
incident, "had their effect. Within a week I was 
officiating at the altar." 

Don Giuseppe had by this time led me into his 
library-museum. "You see," said he, "how much 
your country interests me," and he called my at- 



The Spirit of Italy 117 

tention to a set of volumes on the back of which 
was the title (in Italian), "History of the American 
Eevolution, by Carlo Botta." "A fine work by one of 
our best writers on history of the last century," he 
added. Then the old priest proceeded to recall 
some of his many exploits as a marksman. 

"Those trophies there," pointing to a score of sil- 
ver cups and bronze ornaments, "those trophies tell 
the story. That one I won in an international 
tournament in Switzerland as the best Italian 
'shot.' That other was presented to me by our pres- 
ent King's grandfather at a great tournament in 
Florence — the first prize — 200 metres, at a target 
of 30 centimetres. The cup was valued at 1,500 
francs. 

"The King smiled at my clerical gown as he 
shook me by the hand and congratulated me. In 
my embarrassment I addressed him as 'Sir' instead 
of 'your Majesty,' to the disgust of the official who 
presented me." 

From this fragmentary account of our talk I 
think you will get some idea of this saintly patriot, 
whom every one knows only to love, and who, as a 
friend expressed it in a dedicatory offering, could 
"clasp in one embrace the Carbine which redeemed 
his Country and the Cross which redeemed Hu- 
manity." 



IIS The Spirit of Italy 



XII. 



Rome Calm and Confident Speeds Xew Erecruits to 
the Front and Tenderly Receives the Returning 
Wounded — Streets Crowded and General Busi- 
ness Apparently Going on as Usual — Hotels 
Feel Absence of Patrons — D'Annunzio's De- 
parture — Around the Homes of the Humble. 



Rome, Sunday, July 13. 1915. 



CALMLY as perhaps never before in a war 
in which her vital interests were in- 
volved, today sits Rome upon her seven 
hills. On this mid-Julv Sundav the 
"Brain of Italv" — for such is Rome, as 
Milan is her Spinal Column, Florence 
her Sense of Beauty. Venice her Fantastic Dreams. 
Bologna her Culture. Genoa her Worldly Wisdom 
and Naples her Radiant Smile — the "Brain of 
Italv ,? is clear as Rome's noondav skies and cool as 
her midnight breezes. 

Passed the fever of eight weeks ago, when the 
Populus Romanus, with a unanimity that even 
Rienzi never knew, burst into the Chamber of Dep- 
uties, opposite the hotel where I write these lines; 
when Salandra offered his resignation : when a pro- 
visional government was ready to proclaim the 
Republic of Italy, and the crisis was averted and 
the dvnastv of Savov saved onlv bv the action of 



The Spirit of Italy ill) 

Vittorio Emanuele III. refusing the resignation 
and signing the decree of war. Passed those days, 
unsurpassed, it seems to me, in dramatic aspect in 
modern history. Today Rome's pulse is both 
steady and strong — the envy, doubtless, of every 
other nation in the European abattoir. 

Four days ago I arrived here from Milan. It 
would never do to leave Italy without having a 
glimpse of Rome in these historic moments. Break- 
ing the journey for two hours at sleepy old Pisa 
(out of whose eighty thousand inhabitants nearly 
twenty thousand have gone to the colors) to get a 
peep at Cimabue's wonderful mosaic of Christ in 
the venerable Cathedral, to learn if the Campanile 
had lost its balance yet and to see the dozens of vari- 
colored time-stained flags captured from the Turks 
at the battle of Lepanto, that hang in old San 
Stefano's Church, to which the Italians hope to 
add some modern specimens before the year is out, 
I reached Rome just at sundown. 

Out from the station, onto the Piazza di Termini, 
I found the parklets crowded with children, big and 
little, mothers, sisters and nurses and a goodly 
sprinkling of soldiers, but not nearly so many as I 
would have seen in a northern city. Down the Via 
Nazionale my cabman takes me. The street is full 
of movement, for these are the hours when Rome is 
wide awake. We must drive slowly. Shops all 
open still; sidewalks crowded with well-dressed 
men of all ages, Any number of smart-looking 



120 The Spirit of Italy 

women and young girls in white reminding one of 
the girls you see in Baltimore or Richmond on a 
summer afternoon. We turn and go through the 
tunnel under the Quirinal and the royal palace to 
the Via Tritone. 

More crowds on the sidewalks ! More carriages, 
autos and cabs in the streets! Then across the 
Corso, along which a glance up and down reveals 
still the same movement of humanity. Across the 
Piazza Colonna and around the familiar restaurant 
(closed for the summer, as usual) to the Abergo 
Milano! If you know Rome I'm sure, in your im- 
agination, you have accompanied me and can see 
just what I have seen. 

^w^ ^©^ ^^F 

"I thought there was a war going on and that 
Italy had something to do with it," I remarked to 
the hotel director, Signor Simonetti. 

You can joke with a Milanese or a Venetian or a 
Neapolitan, but you have to know your Roman 
before trying to be funny with him. Signor 
Simonetti was quite serious ; in fact, his tone was a 
bit melancholy, when he replied : 

"Oh, yes ; you may not see any surface change in 
Rome from the summer two years ago when you 
were here, but we hotel men know better. Our busi- 
ness has almost gone to pieces. We live off the 
strangers and now they are few and far between." 

"But business in general?" I asked. 



^he Spirit of Italy 121 

"Well, to tell the truth," was the almost reluct- 
ant answer, "it isn't so bad. We were ten months 
expecting the war, and when it did come business 
men were ready for it, just as the army and navy 
were ; and that's all there is to it. The great pity is 
that Americans seem to have been afraid to come to 
Italy. If they only could have known how satis- 
factory conditions are they might have flocked to 
us and as visitors had nearly all the hotels to them- 
selves." 

Hotel arrangements adjusted, after a good din- 
ner at Old Checco's inimitable Concordia restau- 
rant in the Via della Croce (some of you certainly 
know Old Checco, who for over forty years has been 
providing good things to eat for his fellow Romans 
and the lucky foreigners who have been introduced 
to his kitchen — a Roman of Romans, who knew old 
Pio Nono personally and who, although an ardent 
patriot, still lingers lovingly over memories of the 
days before 1870 when the Pope was King as well 
as priest), I strolled back to the Corso and sought 
a sitting place at the Cafe Aragno — the Cafe de la 
Paix of Rome. 

It was after ten o'clock. The cafe within was 
crowded. The sidewalk outside — «ven part of the 
street — was covered with tables, every one occu- 
pied. Ninety-five per cent, of those who were eat- 
ing ice cream or sipping siphoned syrups were men, 
of whom perhaps only twenty per cent, wore mili- 
tary uniforms. It was a dignified Roman gayety 



122 TThe Spirit of Italy 

that! pervaded the gathering; also a friendly but 
not too familiar spirit of good fellowship. But the 
outward appearance was exactly such as it was two 
and six years previous. The talk, however, as far 
as I could judge, was all war talk. (I thought of 
Times Square and its amateur strategists!) There 
it was that I learned from a friend, whom I 
chanced to meet at the cafe, that I had arrived just 
about twelve hours too late to have seen Rome 
experience its first keen consciousness that the 
nation is really at war. 

In the morning two Roman regiments had left 
for the front and Rome had given vent to its 
enthusiasm. All the way along the Corso and up 
the Via Nazionale to the station flowers were flung 
from window after window. Nice young girls from 
the throngs on the streets pinned tri-color bowknots 
on the passing soldiers. One young woman from 
Trieste handed a Trieste standard to a captain, who 
took it with a bow and smile and waved it in the 
air, while the great cheer which it provoked rolled 
down the Via Nazionale for blocks and blocks and 
the band struck up the Garibaldi March. As the 
train pulled out, I'm told, the soldiers at the win- 
dows suddenly removed their coats, showing them- 
selves in red Garibaldi shirts. Can't you imagine 
what a dramatic effect it must have had? I'm 
sorrv I missed it. 



The Spirit of Italy 123 

Now for the other side of the medal. An hour 
later another long train pulled in, but it was laden 
with the wounded. It was with other emotions that 
the throng gathered at the station witnessed the 
sight. These wounded heroes were the first to be 
brought to Eome. As the serious cases are all 
treated near the front, those who came on this train 
were in a fair way to recovery. Everything was 
ready for them — Red Cross ambulances by the 
score, hospital attendants by the hundred. Even 
some of the street cars had been equipped as 
ambulances. 

The Queen Mother and Queen Elena were both 
on hand to greet the soldiers personally. With 
them was little Prince Umberto, wearing the uni- 
form of a Giovane Esploratore — Boy Scout. He 
spoke to every wounded soldier he could reach. 
Two of them specially took his fancy and he made 
them get into his automobile. Learning where they 
had been fighting, he asked : 

"Did you see papa?" 

When they told him that they had he wanted to 
know all they could tell him as to how he looked 
and what the soldiers said about him. To the latter 
question one replied: 

"His Majesty is too brave. He takes too many 
chances. They say he would have been killed the 
other day if he had not left a battery with whose 
lieutenant he had been talking a short time before 



!24 The Spirit of Italy 

the Austrians found its range and killed the lieu- 
tenant." 

"Well," replied the little Prince (so the story 
goes), "he wouldn't be my papa if he were not 
brave." 

And I think the Prince, if he said it, told the 
truth. The blood of the House of Savoy abounds in 
red corpuscles. 

There was another incident — shall I call it 
"event"? — on the day of my arrival of which 1 
should speak to make the record complete. It was 
the long-awaited departure of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
"for the front." For several weeks the poet had 
been in Rome getting ready to "go to the front." 
However, when a poet like D'Annunzio is "going 
to the front" is requires time to make the necessary 
preparations. His commission as Lieutenant of the 
No vara Lancers was signed some time ago, but a 
commission can be secured so much sooner than a 
wardrobe and Roman tailors are so very, very slow. 
Then, too, the Russian helmet that the Novaras 
wear — vou know the sort of a Russian helmet that 

mi 

a poet- warrior should don — can't be had in every 
ordinary helmet shop even in Rome. 

Time, however, brings everything, and Thursday 
morning D'Annunzio's last bit of military equip- 
ment Was on hand. Of course it was to be a pro- 
found secret just what hour the poet was to leave 



The Spirit of Italy 125 

his hotel. You have heard how he hates all this 
nasty, vulgar newspaper talk. 

But you can't trust these ardent disciples; and 
how help it if all Home becomes informed? And 
why object, you minor poets who can't get commis- 
sions in the Novara Lancers, if, as D'Annunzio 
mounts an elegant automobile "to go the front" and 
spill some of his precious blood for his Patria (or 
get "copy" for his high-priced war correspondence) 
a throng of "the faithful" assembled to do him 
homage and speed him off to help redeem Trieste 
and add a warrior's to his poet's laurels? 

That was three days ago. Would you believe it, 
D'Annunzio is still "going to the front !" But he is 
going by very easy stages. "Chi va piano, va sano," 
says the Italian proverb ("Who goes slowly goes 
safely.") "Wise guy" is D'Annunzio. Last heard 
of he was in Siena. The cynics at the Cafe Aragno 
are making up a "pool" on the number of days it 
will require for him finally to reach headquarters. 

I think we can all agree that Lieutenant 
D'Annunzio of the Novara Lancers is a man of rare 
artistic genius. At all events, it is so admitted in 
Italy. But outside of a few blind worshippers in 
his native land I find that this spectacular return 
to Italy (after four years' absence), and theatric 
exhibitions of himself, are regarded by his fellow 
countrymen as a great big joke. The nation refuses 
to accept him as its Tyrtseus. 

Curious coincidence! Only the day after the 



126 The Spirit op Italy 

poet's departure the Criminal Court here con- 
demned to seventeen months' imprisonment the 
extraordinary French adventurer who for days and 
days posed as xlndre, the famous aviator, living off 
the fat of the land, feted by the military and other 
officials, flattered by the women of the best society 
of Rome and running up all sorts of bills right and 
left. Great times, these, in Italy for pseudo- 
heroes! At times one is amazed at the innocent 
receptivity of the Italian nature — a nature which, 
on the other hand, can manifest itself in a diplo- 
macy to which the rest of the world must take off 
its hat. 

"Take me to the district where the poor people 
live," I said to my cabman after having had a big 
dish of gnocchi romano and a little mug of Frascati 
( No ; the war hasn't robbed the Frascati of its vir- 
tue, Brother Huneker, and I match it any day 
against your vaunted Pilsener ! ) at the quaint little 
Giardino Restaurant in the Street of the Dark 
Shops — Via delle Botteghe Oscure. 

"It's Trastevere — across the river — you want to 
see," the old fellow replied. 

"Trastevere be it!" and off we went around by 
the solemn Castello San Angelo, crowned with that 
figure with unsheathed sword — appropriate enough 
these days! — past the new Court House, along the 
embankment, over Ponte Sisto and then straight 
into the heart of homes of the toiling masses. 



¥hb Spirit of Italy 127 

Oh, very old Rome is this, with its narrow, 
crooked streets and ancient buildings. It was about 
three o'clock and I found that those who could were 
enjoying their siestas just as their richer brethren 
in other quarters were enjoying theirs. But in- 
stead of a comfortable couch in a shaded chamber 
the portals of old doorways, or even the sidewalk, 
were sufficient luxury for them. 

Back over the Ponte Palatina to the old Ghetto 
section. More friends of my cabman. Same results 
of inquiries; nobody going hungry; nobody wor- 
ried or doubtful about the war ; everyone quite con- 
scious of the object of Italy's intervention — to 
"redeem" Trent and Trieste, and, as they put it, 
"to keep Germany from becoming the Padrone del 
Mondo." It was a profitable afternoon, taking it 
all in all, even if the cabby did drink seven bottles, 
not of the good wine of his country, but of an awful 
liquid which here they call — beer! 

JF" ^5" ^^ 

I saw Ambassador Thomas Nelson Page thia 
morning. It was the first time since I tried to get 
him an automobile to take him from Paris to the 
Italian frontier at the outbreak of the war last 
August. He didn't need the motor car after all, for 
he succeeded in getting on a military train and hav- 
ing an experience that may be useful when he 
writes his next novel. The Ambassador seems to 
be standing the strain of his work very well, and, 



128 The Spirit of Italy 

from what I can learn, has made himself very pop- 
ular in Koman society. The diplomatic secrets he 
told me during my visit I shall keep to myself. 

An interesting surprise came when I was cross- 
ing the Piazza Colonna about seven o'clock. Seated 
at a table outside the little corner cafe was a very 
pretty woman with a rather good-looking man. The 
faces seemed familiar. A closer approach revealed 
them as Lina Cavalieri and her husband, Lucien 
Muratore, the well-known French tenor. I thought 
neither of them ever looked better, although Cava- 
lieri had been doing volunteer nursing in Marseilles 
and Muratore had been in the French army since 
the war began until an attack of pneumonia un- 
fitted him for further service. He has a long fur- 
lough and his wife brought him here to see the city 
in which she was born and in which her rare beauty 
first blossomed. 

This morning found me in the world's great Tem- 
ple of the Prince of Peace, St. Peter's Cathedral. 
The worshippers were very few. St. Peter's never 
before looked so empty, due to the fact that Kome 
is almost destitute of strangers. And it never 
looked so unchurchlike. Much more impressive to 
my mind was the atmosphere of the Jesuit church 
— the Gesu — which I visited next, again to find but 
a handful of the faithful attending service. 

Evidently Rome and Italy are not experiencing 



¥hb Spirit op Italy 120 

that same spiritual awakening that came to Paris 
and France eleven months ago. But France had 
felt the iron in her soul ! 



130 The Spirit of Italy 




XIII. 

Salvator Barzilai, the Noted Republican Leader, 
Accepts a Place in the Cabinet — Another Evi- 
dence of the Unity of the Nation — From Dra- 
matic Critic to Government Minister — Feted 
By His Constituents. 

Rome, Monday, July 19, 1915. 

T is not often that a man begins his career 
as a dramatic critic on a daily news- 
paper and reaches the distinction of be- 
coming a Cabinet officer. But "it can 
be done!" 

Salvatore Barzilai, the eminent Italian 
Republican, has done it. Saturday his commission 
was signed by the King, who, in the evening, 
greeted him at General Headquarters, thanking 
him for consenting to break the rule he had formed 
for himself under a monarchical regime and 
accepted this official honor in an hour when party 
politics should be forgotten. 

Barzilai, for the moment, is the most conspicuous 
man in Italy. True, there are some Republicans, 
who, though heart and soul for the prosecution of 
the war, still maintain that he should have refused 
office, while a small band of Socialists also persist 
in being dissatisfied with everybody and everything 
— a small band, however, that seems daily to be 



The Spirit of Italy 131 

diminishing in numbers. The nation at large, how- 
ever, emphatically indorses the nomination and the 
newspapers are ringing with praises of their 
brother journalist and of the wisdom of the govern- 
ment in selecting him as an associate. 

It may not have been because Premier Salandra 
had his doubts about dramatic critics in particular 
or writing journalists in general — for Premier 
Salandra is only a college professor himself — that 
counseled him to have Barzilai made a Minister 
"without a portfolio" — that is to say, without a de- 
partment to manage. For if dramatic critics in 
newspapers can manage "dramatic departments," 
surely they might help run a "war department." 
In fact, I know several New York critics whose 
training and experience ought to qualify them for 
the latter job. Ask any Broadway theatrical 
manager ! 

But New York is a long way from Rome, and it is 
about Rome I'm supposed to be writing. 

It was good politics, let me tell you, and good 
statesmanship to add Signor Barzilai to the Cab- 
inet ; for Republican though he be in principle, his 
acceptance has once more demonstrated the com- 
plete fusion of parties in Italy into one great 
national party with onp object in view — victory. 

The new Minister returned to Rome yesterday 
and early last evening his old constituents of the 



132 The Spirit of Italy 

working class district of Trastevere got up a big 
parade and demonstration in his honor which I 
found it most interesting to have witnessed. It 
took me back to my old political reporting days in 
Maryland in Arthur Gorman's davs. Several thou- 
sand persons took part in the affair. The proces- 
sion, gay with the many colored banners of Italy. 
Rome, Trastevere, Trent and Trieste, marched over 
the Tiber, passed the big white marble monument 
to Yittorio Emanuele II. and through the Piazza 
Venezia so as to have an opportunity to hoot at the 
deserted residence of the Austrian Ambassador, 
then out to Signor Barzilai's tidy villa, in that very 
modern residence part of Rome known as the Prati 
dei Castelli, just beyond the Vatican inclosure. It 
was just a bit naive — just what might have hap- 
pened at Chestertown, Maryland. 

Managing to pass the gate to Signor Barzilai's 
little garden, thanks to a certain Signor Nazzereno, 
I succeeded in meeting him for a few minutes, sur- 
rounded by dozens of his personal and political 
friends. A tall, solidly built man of fifty-five, with 
expressive, kindly eyes, high forehead, carefully 
trimmed mustache, which, like his hair, was turn- 
ing gray, he greeted me with a kindly — may I say 
paternal? — manner, shaking my hand in good 
American fashion. He seemed to me a bit fatigued, 
but his tactfulness concealed it from most of those 
men surrounding him to offer their congratula- 
tions, 



The Spirit of Italy 133 

One of the latter deserves more than a passing 
word. He was a slender little man with a neatly- 
trimmed gray beard that made him an image of the 
pictures of Mazzini one sees so much these days. 
This, together with the other fact that his breast 
was covered with old medals, led me to him. I told 
him my impression. 

"Mazzini!" he exclaimed, in perfect, English 
"why, I knew him intimately in London when I 
was a professor of languages, Professor Volprug- 
nano. I'm eighty-eight years of age and fought with 
Garibaldi in 1848 at Cornudo, right in the present 
war district. I was with him when he entered 
Naples, but I quit after Gaeta, for I was a volun- 
teer and didn't want to be enrolled in the regular 
army. 

"Although a Eoman, of course I couldn't come 
back home until the Italian army entered in 1870. 
Since then I've been here, and if my old legs were 
not so confoundedly shaky I would volunteer again. 
As for my friend Mazzini, he was just a bit too 
ideal. He should have accepted the situation at the 
time and for the sake of the greater Italy done 
what Barzilai, who is just as sincere a Eepublican 
in principle, has done. Our liberties are quite safe 
with our present young King. He truly represents 
the national spirit." 



134 The Spirit op Italy 

The procession had arrived. The street was 
packed with people shouting and cheering, while 
the band, as usual, played the Garibaldi March. 
It was time for Barzilai to show himself on the bal- 
cony, and I had to leave the old professor. When 
the new Minister did appear there was a great out- 
burst of Latin enthusiasm. A committee chairman 
made a brief cordial address of congratulation. 

Then came Barzilai's turn. He is said to be one 
of the finest orators in the Chamber of Deputies. 
I can well believe it. He has all the qualifications. 
His presence is calmly commanding. His voice is 
resonantly mellow. He speaks with a fine sense of 
rhythm and looks his audience straight in the face. 
As for his gestures, they are simple, forceful, grace- 
ful. His hands are well shapen and he knows just 
what to do with them. Every word was distinct, 
and when it was propelled by emotion it shot from 
his mouth like a projectile from a "75." 

Short and to the point was the speech, but the 
end of every sentence justified a cheer — especially 
one in which he declared that "the parties in Italy 
without abdication or humiliation have returned 
to their common origin to be united in one faith, 
one purpose, one soul." And also when he con- 
cluded in great earnestness with the statement that 
"Italy never will accept either a peace or a truce 
with her traditional enemy or with any others who 
openly or disguisedly aid her with threats or snares 
until with Trent may be restored her natural bu]- 



The Spirit of Italy 135 

wark of the Alps, with Trieste her liberty of action 
in the Adriatic, and these redemptions of Italian 
territory affirmed shall see the restoration in 
Europe of the rule of liberty and international jus- 
tice, instead of Teutonic greed and arrogance." 

It is not alone because he has been a Kepublican 
leader, however, that this interesting man has been 
added to the Italian Cabinet. This point I want to 
emphasize. Equally important is the fact that he 
is a native of Trieste, where he was convicted and 
sent to jail by the Austrian Government while still 
in his 'teens because he was involved in an Italian 
Nationalist movement. When he was released he 
left Trieste and studied at the two old universities 
of Padua and Bologna. After graduation' in law 
he sought activity in journalism in Rome, begin- 
ning, as I said, as a dramatic critic on the Tribuna 
and subsequently winning a reputation as a spe- 
cialist on foreign affairs, 

All this time, however, Barzilai's heart has been 
with Trieste. The dream of his life has been its 
"redemption," as the Italians express it. So that 
when twenty-five years ago some one suggested that 
Trieste, when Austria was putting the screws on 
every pro-Italian movement, ought to be repre- 
sented in the Italian Parliament, it was decided 
by a propagandist committee to launch a candidate 
in some Parliamentary district in Rome simply on 
the platform : "Trieste must be redeemed." 



136 The Spirit op Italy 

The Trastevere, or working class district — say 
the Avenue A or Tenth avenue district of Rome — 
became vacant through the resignation of Ricciotti 
Garibaldi, and here the fight was to be made. As 
to a candidate, several names were mentioned, 
among them young Barzilai's, which seemed most 
in favor. 

"But nobody knows him!" was objected. 

"All the better," was the retort. "This is a fight 
for a 'cause' ; the less known the candidate the bet- 
ter for the 'cause' if he wins." 

The public in general and voters in particular, 
however, soon found out the qualities of the young 
Trieste candidate; but Crispi, then in power, 
wanted no trouble with Austria — he was always for 
the Triplice — and he put up Count Antonelli 
against Barzilai. The Count won by a small 
majority. However, the contest gave the young 
Triestino great fame, and when a few months later 
the general election was held Barzilai beat his 
opponent, Prince Odescalchi, "hands down." He 
has been in the Chamber of Deputies ever since, 
meanwhile still keeping up his journalistic work 
and for fourteen years occupying a post which 
Italian newspaper men tell me is an honor quite 
as distinguished as that of Cabinet officer in 
ordinary times — that of President of the National 
Press Association. 



The Spirit of Italy 137 

Such is, in brief, the story of Italy's man of the 
hour. Barzilai has his opportunity. As a Tries- 
tino — as a constant "Irredentist" — upon him will 
devolve in large part the reorganization of the civil 
life in that district in the event of its being added 
to Italy. He better than anyone else knows the 
people and their needs, and his nomination to the 
Ministry is another guarantee of the determination 
of the government to fight the fight out to the bitter 
end. 

Not the least interesting fact about Signor Salva- 
tore Barzilai is the fact that he is of Jewish parent- 
age, like Luzzatti, Nathan and Sonnino, the present 
Minister of Foreign Affairs. He is also a Free 
Mason, which usually seems to be something quite 
shocking to the Italian Conservatives, but in these 
hours has lost its terrors for the Clericals quite as 
much as has the shadow of the "Temporal Power" 
for the Radicals. Such questions are regarded as 
secondary when the future of the Patria is in- 
volved. 

Incidentally Minister Barzilai's chief of staff has 
the good American name (as I told him) of Levi. 
He is a handsome chap and looks just like Dr. 
Baruch, of New York — ten years ago. 

Barzilai naturally suggests the press — the 
Italian press. Rome swarms with newspaper cor- 
respondents, I don't speak of the representatives 



138 The Spirit of Italy 

of foreign, but of Italian provincial papers. The 
government has provided admirable accommoda- 
tions of them' at the General Post Office. Every 
reasonable convenience is to be had, and if you 
have proper credentials and a few ounces of tact as 
a visiting newspaper man you will be treated with 
true Latin courtesy. 

Just now there is some discomfort on the part of 
foreign newspaper men here as to whether they will 
be allowed to go to the front presently. Possibly 
a limited number of correspondents of allied 
nations and who are allies by birth may have the 
privilege. The outlook for neutrals is not so good. 
But can you blame the Italian Government? If 
you knew some of the things I know about "neu- 
trals" you wouldn't. And I want to put myself on 
record as saving as a "neutral" that the Italian 
Government is quite right. 



Two things you can't leave Rome this time with- 
out having noted: The extraordinary absence of 
priestly and seminarish gowns on the street, and 
the natty, snappy, trim little girl street car con- 
ductors (three hundred and fifty of them making 
seventv-five cents a dav of ten hours), who have 
replaced their brothers and sweethearts called to 
the colors. After the war I suppose the girl car 
conductors will have to go. Of course the thou- 
sands of young seminary students and their black 
soutanes will return. 



The Spirit of Italy 139 

I close with the blunt question, Which note 
would you prefer in a permanent picture of the 
Eternal City? Be honest, Manly Male Readers! 
The "gentle reader" isn't fooled. She knows intui- 
tively how you would vote on such a proposition ! 



140 The Spirit of Italy 



XIV. 



Lovely Florence Proving Her Patriotism — Tor- 
pedoing of the "Garibaldi" Strengthens Italy's 
Determination — Two Patriotic Demonstrations 
— Colaianni Explains Lissa — An American in 
Soldier's Uniform — Florentine Food and 
Humor. 

Florence, Wednesday, July 21, 1915. 



OME you admire. Florence you must love. 
TJ Whether you have been in Italy or not 

Pm sure you will want to know how 
this city of concentrated beauty is ac- 
cepting the war — the city that was the 
capital of the new Italy until the army 
of Vittorio Emanuele II. forced a breach in the 
walls and entered Rome forty-five years ago — the 
city that was the cradle of Modern Civilization 
(now so battle stained and disfigured in this old 
Europe) and whose character to me has always 
seemed symbolized in the Gioconda of her own 
Leonardo. 

I reached Florence early yesterday in what seems 
an interesting moment. Before leaving Rome at 
midnight we had the news of the torpedoing of the 
Italian cruiser Garibaldi, whose commander, Cap- 
tain Nunes-Franco (fortunately saved), is a Flor- 
entine. The news, too, came on the eve of the 



The Spirit op Italy 141 

anniversary of one of the dark episodes in the his- 
tory of Italy's wars of unification — the defeat of 
the Italian fleet by the Austrian Admiral Tegethoff 
near the Island of Lissa in the Adriatic, July 20, 
1866. 

You see, there was every reason to expect to find 
the populace of Florence in a state of depression. 
"Excitable" and "superstitious" so many Ameri- 
cans consider the Italians, what will they do in the 
face of this fresh naval disaster following the loss 
of that other and finer vessel, the Amalfi — this 
ominous sinking of a ship bearing the name of the 
Great Liberator and commanded by a fellow towns- 
man? 

«^? «^p ^^ 

Signor Petrobelli, my old friend, the director of 
the Hotel Eoma on the Piazza Santa Maria 
Novella, was the first Florentine I talked with. He 
looked serious, but far from distressed. 

"Bad news?" I remarked. 

"From the sea," was his reply, "but there's a 
rumor of very good news from the land. Besides, 
we have to expect naval losses. The Austrians have 
the advantage of us in the Dalmatian coast with its 
innumerable hiding places for the enemy's vessels, 
while our eastern coast is one long strip of sandy 
beach. They are afraid to give us an honorable 
fight. The Duca Degli Abruzzi some time ago, you 
remember, sent them a wireless telling them the 



142 The Spirit of Italy 

Italian fleet was ready and waiting and inviting 
them to respond. And they did respond; but how? 
By bombarding defenseless coast towns and mak- 
ing assassin submarine attacks. When we were 
beaten by Tegetoff in '66 it was at least, a Teal 
naval engagement." 

"And how does Florence take it?" I asked. 

"Go around and talk to people yourself and 
judge/' was Signor Petrobelli's advice. 

Which I took, beginning, of course, with a visit 
to the Police Commissioner, Cavaliere Luigi 
Majoli. The Commissioner put at my disposal — if 
I needed his services — his special officer, one Luigi 
Vicarr, who had lived in New York for several 
years, and whose absence of a decade from the "gay 
white lights" had not yet conquered his longing for 
Broadway. 

"This disaster," said Cavaliere Majoli, "is cer- 
tainly most lamentable, but instead of shaking the 
purpose of our people it has had just the opposite 
effect. It has made us just so much more resolute 
and determined to pursue this war to the bitter end. 
It's the people's war. The politicians had to sub- 
mit to the people's will. And the fact that we have 
lost another vessel in the Adriatic has impressed 
more than ever the minds of the masses that we 
must not permit an insidious enemy to control the 
coast of the Adriatic opposite ours. 

"I'm glad," he continued, "to meet an American 
observer of our country during these trying times, 



The Spirit of Italy 143 

for I'm afraid too often the American mentality 
has been somewhat at fault in its estimate of ours. 
This war, however, should open American eyes to 
the real Italian character. It has shown that we 
have both heart and head. The vast number of 
charitable organizations at work proves that we 
have heart, and the manner in which we have organ- 
ized for victory proves that we have head." 



^5^ ^^r 



Thanks to Cavaliere Majoli, last night I attended 
a big gathering of Florentine citizens at the fine 
hall of the Liberal Union to hear an address by a 
distinguished Kepublican, Signor Colaianni, who 
long has been a member of Parliament from Sicily 
and who is distinguished as a political economist. 
Short, thick set, rugged, with bristling grey mous- 
tache, although approaching his eightieth year, this 
fine old Sicilian is still full of vitality. He was a 
picturesque figure as he took his place on the plat- 
form with half a dozen other Garibaldi veterans 
wearing the old red shirt and their medals and 
holding aloft a tattered banner which had seen ser- 
vice with "The Thousand," whom the Liberator 
had led to Sicily in 1860, arrayed behind him. 
Signor Colaianni is not an orator like Barzilai, but 
he spoke with great earnestness in a conversational 
style, and what he said met with a hearty response 
from his hearers. His subject was the ill-starred 
event of Lissa and its causes. 



144 The Spirit op Italy 

The conclusion of the Sicilian statesman's ad- 
dress was significant and evoked marked applause. 
The trouble with the Italian fleet in 1866 was that 
its Admiral, Persano, was an incompetent political 
admiral. This time, however, Signor Colaianni 
emphasized, politicians have had to retire, and the 
Italian navy and army are being directed by men 
who know their business and are inflexible patriots 
as well. 

While Signor Colaianni was talking to his audi- 
ence at the Liberal Union there was an even more 
impressive event in progress at the big Politeana 
Fiorentina, an immense theatre where over a 
thousand wounded soldiers had been invited to 
attend the performance of a patriotic drama, "Per 
Servire la Patria," performed by the eminent old 
Italian actor, Alfredo De Sanctis, and his company. 
Signor De Sanctis is much beloved in this country, 
and he and his fellow players gave their services 
gratis. Many thousand francs were realized for 
the Soldiers' Widows' Fund. 

Between acts he made a stirring speech to the 
boys who had seen service at the front and those 
about to go, explaining with simple eloquence the 
causes of the war; putting all the blame on Ger- 
many and declaring that it was Italy's duty to civ- 
ilization to take arms and share in the glory and 
honor of the titantic struggle against the forces of 
Teutonic barbarism, and the audience cheered de- 
liriously when be concluded : 



The Spirit of Italy 145 

"No Italian can ever forget that after the torpe- 
doing of the Amalfi a Viennese newspaper uttered 
these horribly infamous words: 'Never did the 
fish have a finer dinner !' Brutes ! Brutes ! Brutes ! 
Soldiers of Italy, drive the barbarians back to their 
dens I'? 

"Down with Germans !" "Down with the Aus- 
trians!" "Death to the assassins!" were the cries 
with which the audience, civilians as well as sol- 
diers, responded to the old actor's fiery appeal. 

Speaking about organization, I can testify that 
the women of Florence are not far behind their 
American sisters. Chance and curiosity led me this 
morning into the Or San Michele, which every 
visitor to Florence knows — that little church with 
the wonderful gothic shrine on which Andrea 
Orcagna worked for a dozen years — a fourteenth 
century masterpiece. Entering the adjoining door- 
way I followed a procession of women up a stair- 
way, to find myself in a large and beautiful old 
hall, which I learned was the place where popular 
lectures on Dante are given through the winter. 
This hall had been turned into the Central Bureau 
of the Relief Society headed by the Marchese Gino 
Incontri. Two charming Florentine ladies, who 
are her chief aids, explained all the committee's 
varied operations to me, and what they don't do for 
the wives and families of the soldiers and prisoners, 
and disoccupied it would be hard to tell, 



146 The Spirit of Italy 

While I was passing a few moments enjoying the 
inimitable bit of bronze of that delightful rascal 
Benvenuto Cellini — Perseus and the Gorgon's 
head — in the Loggia dei Lanzi, a private soldier 
approached me. 

"You seem to like it," said he in excellent 
English. 

"Don't you?" I replied, sparring for time to look 
him over. 

"Of course I do," he replied ; "but I hadn't seen 
it for sixteen years until I returned to Italy a few 
weeks ago. I am a naturalized American, but when 
I learned that my four brothers had gone to the 
front from mv old home in Sulmona, in the Abruzzi 
country, I couldn't resist the call of my land of 
birth, especially when I realized from the American 
point of view what the war means. I've never been 
a soldier, having been exempt as the oldest son. So 
I am going through the usual training for the next 
two months. I've been all over North and South 
America for the Armours, but I never walked so 
much in my Ufa as I have during the past few 
weeks. Mv feet are so sore I can hardlv stand. 
There is no doubt about the thoroughness of our 
training." 

I noticed that the number of my American- 
Italian soldier's regiment was the Sixty-ninth. 

"That's an Irish regiment," I suggested. 

"Sounds like it to a New Yorker," he responded 
with a smile, "and by a curious coincidence I have 



The Spirit of Italy 147 

an almost Irish name — Tirone — Luigi (that's sure 
enough Italian) Tirone." 

Private Tirone and I spent several hours to- 
gether. Tirone discussed the situation calmly and 
objectively, and he cherishes no illusions as to the 
speedy termination of the war. Nor does the gov- 
ernment, as preparations already are being made 
for a winter campaign. I felt that Private Tirone's 
information was quite reliable when I discovered 
that he is a friend of my friend, Edward Ziegler, 
the New York musical critic. Again let me quote 
that good bromide : "A small world after all." 

War or no war, you still can eat well in Florence 
if you know where to go. Plain Clothes Policeman 
Vicari insisted upon being my host for a meal, and 
took me to Paoli's, on the little narrow Via Tavo- 
lini. A thoroughly Florentine restaurant, which 
you enter by way of the kitchen. Bare marble slab 
tables and no "style," but a fine old arched ceiling, 
with the walls frescoed with the arms of the old 
Florentine guilds, which provide ample decoration. 

An excellent meal for the two of us cost exactly 
eighty-four cents with the tip! And Vicari had 
real wine and I had a bottle of mineral water. 

A handsome young priest sat at the table beside 
me. We got into conversation and discussed war, 
politics, gastronomy and — ecclesiastical history. I 
found him a rather broad-minded clerical. I don't 



148 The Spirit of Italy 

know his name and if I did it would not be fair to 
tell it, for he gave expression to some very "mod- 
ernist" ideas that might get him into trouble. I 
understood better when he told me that he is a pro- 
fessor in a college in Bologna, and when I remarked 
that it would be a good thing if the Italian Church 
would send five thousand of its priests to America 
for a few years in exchange for the same number of 
American priests in Italy he didn't combat the idea. 
In fact, although he changed the subject and talked 
of many other things, my proposition must have 
stuck in his mind, for as he was taking leave of me 
he leaned over and whispered in my ear : 

"I wouldn't object at all to being sent to 
America." 

38 m/Zf t^> 

From what I have written I think you will gather 
that the life of this city is proceeding quite as nor- 
mally as I found it in Milan, Genoa, Naples and 
Rome. All the galleries and museums are open as 
usual. Although fully prepared for aeroplane 
attacks, no one here believes that the enemy's avia- 
tors are going to risk a flight over the Appenines in 
these times. Unlike the Cathedral of Milan, the 
Cathedral of Florence still retains the stained glass 
beautv of its windows, and all the treasures of art 
for which Florence is famous are exactly where 
they were this time a year ago. There are several 
hundred Americans still residing in or about Flor- 



The Spirit of Italy 149 

ence either in pensions in the quieter districts of 
the city or in villas on the Piesole hillsides, though, 
strange to say, I haven't} seen an American since 
arriving here. 

Tonight at the cafe in the popular Piazza Vit- 
torio Emanuele II. a cheerful crowd is listening to 
an excellent band playing popular Italian operatic 
music and discussing the unofficial reports of big 
successes all along the Italian front. The news is 
such as to more than offset the loss of the Garibaldi 
if it is only half true. Everything indicates the 
early capture of Gorizia. 

One more reference to food : Opposite the Cathe- 
dral is a small but excellent eating place called the 
Giotto Restaurant. Signor Giovanni Casacci, the 
presiding genius, has a fine sense of humor, as every 
good Tuscan should have. It is he Who tells the 
story. 

"A nice old English lady," said he, "was directed 
to the Giotto Restaurant last year and told to ask 
for the proprietor, as he would give her his special 
attention. Along she came. 

" 'Is Mr. Giotto in?' says she. 

"No, madam, I replied, trying to look serious. 
'I'm sorry to say he's dead.' 

" 'Oh, dear me !' says she. 'How distressing. And 
when did he pass away?' 

"Well, madam, it was some time ago, but we have 



ISO The Spirit of Italy 

a nice monument to his memory which he designed 
himself. If you step to the corner I'll show it to 
you. 

"So I led her to where she could have a good view 
of the Campanile." 

" ' You' re a dreadful man to make such fun of 
me !" she exclaimed, 'and I'd rather go hungry than 
eat in your old restaurant !' 

"And off she went. I lost a customer, but 1 
couldn't help having my joke. It's in our blood, I 
suppose." 

Eemember the Gioconda smile? She was having 
her joke on some one, you may be sure. Leonardo 
knew, I'll bet, but he never told. 



Thh Spirit of Italy 151 



XVIII. 

Mediaeval Bologna in the War Zone — Strangers' 
Visits Not Encouraged — From Baroarossa to 
Marconi — Dantesque Gloom of the Endless 
Arcade at Night — In the Halls in Which Mez- 
zojanti and Carducci Taught — Comments on 
American "Neutrality/ 



>> 



Bologna, Saturday, July 24, 1915. 



THOUGH a considerable distance from the 
"firing line," nevertheless I find myself 
really in the "zone of war." When I 
left Florence yesterday I didn't know 
whether I should be accepted in Bo- 
logna as a desirable guest or not. 
Since the fifteenth of this month the restrictions 
upon visitors to cities and towns in the "zone of 
war" have been made much more exacting — and 
quite properly so — so that a stranger, even Italian, 
but especially a foreigner, finds entrance no easy 
matter. I thought I would take a chance, however, 
and arriving late in the afternoon at Bologna I 
presented myself to the military authorities at the 
railway station. 

A captain, a first lieutenant and a second lieu- 
tenant all looked me over, scrutinized my creden- 
tials and examined and cross-examined me in a 



152 The Spirit of Italy 

manner to do justice to a corps of Philadelphia 
lawyers. Apparently I made a tolerably good wit- 
ness, as the captain prepared and handed me a very 
modest looking document, granting me "sojourn" 
until this evening, signed "Capitano Agabbi," and 
having a bit of a laugh at me by remarking in the 
language of Shakespeare : 

"I don't think you can see very much of Bo- 
logna tonight. And, by the way, if you only had 
spoken in English instead of Italian I think we 
would have understood you more easily and saved 
you at least five minutes' delay!" 

He was charmingly polite and I really blushed. 
You see this is Bologna — the Athens, the Boston, 
of Italy. And I can quite understand how, in a 
similar situation, if a poor Zulu from South Africa, 
arriving at the North Station, should have applied 
for a "permit to sojourn" in Boston, he too might 
have been turned loose to roam for twenty-four 
hours on Beacon street, Commonwealth avenue 
and the Commons with the remark : 

"If you only had spoken to us in Zulu instead of 
'pidgin-English' you would have simplified our la- 
bor and allowed yourself several minutes more time 
for the enjoyment and appreciation of Boston !" 

However, I retired, I think, gracefully, and 
made for the Albergo Italia. I knew nothing about 
it, but the name sounded safe. And I made no mis- 
take, for it is in the heart of the city, and I learn 
tonight ttot unfortunately my "permit to so- 



The Spirit of Itaia 153 

journ" won't permit me to see for myself Queen 
Elena and Princess Iolanda, who are expected to 
arrive in Bologna, in strict incognito, from the 
front, where they have been visiting the King, and 
who will stop at this same hotel. Her Majesty, 
I am told, has insisted that there shall be no notice 
taken of her visit, as her purpose is simply to see 
and speak with the wounded soldiers in the mili- 
tary hospitals. 

Very different your feelings on arriving at Bo- 
logna from those you experience entering Rome 
or Florence, or any other Italian city I have visit- 
ed so far except Venice. Soldiers, soldiers, sol- 
diers! Everywhere soldiers! Thousands of the 
habitual residents have gone to the front or to mili- 
tary depots farther north or east; but their ab- 
sence seems more than made up for by the thou- 
sands and thousands of the soldiers brought from 
farther south to Bologna, which ordinarily has a 
population of nearly 200,000. 

But how anachronistic seem all their modern 
uniforms in this strange, this unique city! Foi 
here you are back in the Middle Ages and earliest 
Renaissance period. Miles and miles of round Ro- 
man arched arcades of reddish brick or terra cotta 
line the streets. Columbus' great-great-grandfather 
was a babe in arms when the monumental struc- 
tures which house or housed Bologna's civil and 
military authorities, and are among her chief ar- 



154 The Spirit of Italy 

chitectural and historic glories, were planned and 
built. What a picture, you think, if instead of 
bersaglieri and Alpini, and cavalrymen in their up- 
to-date gray-green, these fine fellows were garbed 
and equipped as were the archers, halberdiers or 
doughty knights in the far away days of their an- 
cestors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries! 

But just as you have gazed in wonder at the im- 
mense, rugged leaning towers, which side by side 
have been projecting themselves skyward from the 
centre of the city for more than eight hundred 
years, one of which, upward of three hundred feet 
high, seems the medieval forerunner of the Metro- 
politan Life and Singer skyscrapers, your cabman 
suddenly points out a handsome old palazzo and 
remarks : 

"The Palazzo Marconi!" 

Presto ! The spell is broken ! Vanished the vi- 
sion evoked of Barbarossa days! This is the 
twentieth century even in old Bologna, which today 
hails the man who was born in that palazzo forty 
years ago as her most distinguished son. 



Severe, conservative, scholastic, mathematical in 
its lines, there is an air of pride, of self-conscious 
superiority, about Bologna that even war has not 
softened. Here, by the way, is the central bureau 
of the postal censor. All the foreign mails come 
to and go from Bologna. Where else find a greater 
assortment of interpreters? Is not this the seat of 



The Spirit of Italy 155 

the second oldest university in the world? (I 
think I am not mistaken in putting it next to 
Paris. ) And was it not here that the famous Car- 
dinal Mezzofanti, who could speak more than a 
hundred different languages and dialects, was born 
and taught? 

Assuredly Bologna was just the proper place to 
establish the foreign censorship, while the reputa- 
tion of its medical department of the university 
justified its selection as an important hospital cen- 
tre. 

With all its air of severity, however, I found even 
in my short visit that Bologna is quite human and 
that its interest in the war is not less profound and 
intense than is found elsewhere in the peninsula. 
Though for centuries a part of the Papal States, 
the short period of independence during the first 
French Republic, when Napoleon made it capital 
of the Cispaduan Republic, awakened a spirit of 
liberty that Austrian rule afterward never could 
subdue. 

That spirit pervaded the halls of the old uni- 
versity, hovered over the professor's chair. Year 
after year thousands of youths of culture and en- 
thusiasm were sent forth to every part of Italy to 
preach the gospel of Italian liberty and unity. You 
can imagine what a potent role Bologna must have 
played in the making of the new Italy ; especially,, 
too, when you remember that Giosue Carducci, the 
great poet of Italy's third war of independence 
(tfeis she calls her "fourth and last") for many 



156 The Spirit of Italy 

years occupied a professorship at the university, 
which, until he died in 1907 at the age of 72, was in 
truth the Holy See of Italian Culture of which 
Carducci was Pontifex Maximus. 

•^29 ^W ^W 

The Eestaurant of the Risorgimento — expressive 
word that, applied to Italy's struggle for independ- 
ence, "Kising Again" as from the tomb — invited 
me for a dinner of Bologna sausage and spaghetti 
a la Bolognese. Across my table I could see the 
old Palazzo Comunale, while in the square between 
us completely boxed in to protect it from aeroplane 
bombs, stood another of Italy's treasures in bronze, 
Gianbologna's famous Fountain of Neptune. A 
good job the carpenters had made of it and again 
I was reminded that in spite of the crowds on the 
streets and in the cafes and restaurants and the ex- 
cellent food at ordinary prices, there is a war in 
progress in which Italy has several million sons en- 
gaged. 

While passing around the corner to the cafe in 
the venerable Palazzo del Podesta I felt a strange 
change taking place in the atmosphere. It took me 
a few moments to realize that nearly all the open 
street lamps had been extinguished and that the 
only light provided the wayfarer came from the in- 
digo colored lanterns hanging at long intervals 
beneath the sombre arches up the seemingly endless 
arcades. 



The Spirit op Italy 157 

Venice in obscurity I already have told you 
about. But Venice in perfect darkness is a deli- 
cious, fantastic dream. Bologna, grim, almost 
gloomy, even in daylight, in this supernatural dark- 
ness more resembles a nightmare. "Lurid," I 
think, is the word to describe that faint indigo 
lamp light; "Dantesque" one might characterize 
the peculiar effect. In fact, walking at night in 
Bologna is very much like what it would be to 
take a stroll through the New York subway void 
of its trains. 

"Then, of course," I hear you say, "in such a 
state of things that stern old scholastic-ecclesias- 
tical medieval city turns into bed soon after the 
shadows fall." 

Stuff and nonsense ! That's just where Bologna 
fools you ! Would you believe it, this prim old lady 
is a most shocking hypocrite ! Notorious, I found, 
are the Bolognese as night birds. It was long after 
midnight when I returned to my hotel, but I left 
the Cafe del Podesta with the waiters still busy 
serving patrons, and the many other eating and 
drinking places which I passed were equally well 
occupied. Of course, many curtains were suspend- 
ed on the exteriors of the arcades in front, while 
the few electric lights within were enveloped in 
green tissue paper. 

In the circumstances you felt that in taking even 
a "soft" drink you were doing something naughty : 
and this feeling which seemed common to the Bo- 



158 The Spirit of Italy 

lognese appeared to encourage them in their inno- 
cent wickedness! 

mAZ> JZ> «^y 

One of many excellent newspapers in Italy is the 
Resto del Carlino of Bologna. Its tendencies are 
democratic without being extreme. It reminds one 
of the New York Evening Post and smacks a bit of 
the Boston Evening Transcript. Signor G. Teresi, 
who several years ago worked on the Progresso 
Italiano of New York, is a member of the staff and 
the newspaper's authority in American matters 
generally. Shortly before midnight I found him in 
the editorial rooms, his sleeves rolled up, "editing 
copy" and writing "headlines" just as though he 
were on Park row. Although employed on a Bo- 
lognese paper, he is a Sicilian by birth. 

"Coming from the South," said Signor Teresi, "I 
can view the Bolognese objectively. They seem 
colder, perhaps, than they really are. You have 
heard how Sicily is all aglow with patriotic fire and 
you have heard with what tremendous enthusiasm 
our Sicilian soldiers have been attacking the enemy 
and capturing his trenches. Well, let me assure 
you that the men from this country of Emilia and 
Romagna are winning equal honors. 

"They may be less demonstrative than the South- 
ern Italians, but they are not less determined that 
this shall be a war to the bitter end. Every day the 
feeling grows deeper that this is a contest of the juU***, 



The Spirit of Italy 159 

forces of civilization, of huiuau rights against bar- 
barism and tyranny, and there isn't a man in Italy 
from the King to the simplest contadino who 
doesn't realize the duty we owe to the world in gen- 
eral and our country in particular. The anti-bel- 
lum neutralists? They are all in line, except, pos- 
sibly, a negligible handful. 

"We are waiting impatiently to see what the 
United States is going to do. Today's forecast of 
the note to Germany indicates a positive stand by 
President Wilson. Surely the United States can do 
nothing else. Are you going to continue to let Ger- 
many 'bluff' you? Is your 'hand' so weak that you 
are afraid to 'call' Germany? That's what we in 
Europe are asking. You have played the gentle- 
man long enough. Germany surely is deceiving 
herself as to your spirit as she deceived herself re- 
garding ours. 

"To be frank, we want to see the United States 
definitely on the side of the Allies. No need to 
make actual war. Just sever all your relations 
with Germany and Austria and the unspeakable 
Turk and give the Allies all your moral and finan- 
cial support. It would do more than anything else 
to help end the war, which can only end one way— 
with the submission of Germany. A triumphant 
Germany would mean Europe in chains ! And your 
Monroe Doctrine! Why, it wouldn't even be the 
most infinitesimal fragment of a 'scrap of paper.' " 

3ST 3SP "XT 

To leave Bologna without having seen her uni- 



160 The Spirit of Italy 

versity would have been unpardonable. But as my 
time was short (my train leaves in an hour) I had 
to get up early. My promenade took me past the 
famous market which I found crowded with ven- 
dors and purchasers. And what an admirable mar- 
ket it was ! Well could I understand the Bolognese 
respect for the table and realize once more that 
real culture and a good kitchen are not unrelated. 
The fresh figs especially caught my fancy on the 
fruit stalls and the bag full that I bought for ten 
soldi kept me busy as I strolled along in the fresh 
morning air until I reached my destination. 

The present university buildings have been in 
use only about a hundred years — quite modern, one 
might say. This being vacation time, even were 
there no war, one might expect to find them com- 
paratively deserted. I found them almost entirely 
so, but learned that were conditions normal and 
Were the season later, class and teachers' rooms 
would be at the service of between three and four 
thousand students, of whom ten to fifteen per cent, 
are women. The call to arms, however, materially 
emptied the university of both students and teach- 
ers. Nearly all the young women offered their ser- 
vices to the Eed Cross. 

Almost the only department which seemed to be 
open for business was the library, and there I found 
a very kindly host in the assistant librarian, Dr. 
Ludovicoe Frati, who showed me all through it, 
pointing out especially the documents which he re- 
cently had received from my own American uni- 



The Spirit op Italy 161 

versity, as well as all the other leading colleges of 
the United States, to prove that old Bologna keeps 
in touch with her sister scholastic institutions of 
the New World. The room in which over 6,000 
precious manuscripts are preserved seemed one of 
his pets. On the wall hung a fine portrait of the 
university's great polyglot, Cardinal Mezzofanti, 
in his gorgeous ecclesiastical robes. 

"We have his beretta, too," said Dr. Frati. 
"Would you like to see it?" 

"Surely," said I; whereupon he unlocked a case 
and reverently withdrew therefrom the precious 
headpiece of the Cardinal. 

There was nothing extraordinary about it that 
I could see as he handed it, to me for examination, 
but I couldn't help sharing to some extent Dr. 
Frati's reverence for a relic which had for so many 
years crowned a head that contained so much lin- 
guistic lore as did the head of Mezzofanti. 

"Would you permit an American indiscretion?'' 
I suddenly ventured. 

"Name it," said the doctor. 

"I'd like to put that beretta on my head for a mo- 
ment, if you don't object?" 

Dr. Frati and his companions smiled. They 
were too polite to refuse. 

"Why, it fits you perfectly !" exclaimed my host. 

"Well, doctor, I'll tell you better the next time I 
come to Bologna if the charm has worked, for I'm 
afraid I'd have to sleep in it a good many nights 
before I could read Dante." 



162 The Spirit of ItaLy: 

Dr. Frati wouldn't let me leave the university 
without seeing where Carducci used to lecture. 
Naturally I expected to find a hall of some dimen- 
sions. What was my surprise to be led into a little 
modation for hardly forty students ! His old desk 
on a raised platform is still there, while on a pedes- 
tal in the corner — the only ornament in the room — 
stood a fine marble bust of the great Toscan poet 
and patriot. This is the same hall into which od 
one memorable occasion after Carducci had pub- 
lished an ode in homage to Queen Margherita, 
whose loftiness of character he so admired, a crowd 
of Republican students burst, shouting: 

"Down with Carducci! Down with Carducci !" 

Disdainful of their invasion and threats the poet 
jumped upon his desk, facing them with a leonine 
pride, exclaimed: 

"Useless to shout 'Down with Carducci !' for Na- 
ture put me above you ! Better shout, 'To Death !' " 



The Spirit of Italy 163 



XIX. 

A Hundred Thousand Italian Voices Sing Patriotic 
Hymns — Remarkable Concert in Milan Organ- 
ized and Conducted by Arturo Toscanini — 
Verdi as the Voice of United Italy. 

Milan, Tuesday, July 27, 1915. 



THE spirit of the new Italy, called from 
"the vasty deep" of the nation's being by 
the magic wand of Arturo Toscanini, 
spoke last night as never had it spoken 
before. And the voice was the voice of 
Verdi. 
Fortunate the hundred thousand sons and daugh- 
ters of this fair land who filled the immense Milan 
Arena and the streets encircling it, on the occasion 
of the Patriotic Concert organized and conducted 
by the wizard maestro for the benefit of the artists 
of the theatre made destitute by the war! Even 
more fortunate the few Americans who were able to 
witness a spectacle, the memory of which time can 
never efface ! It was all Italy pouring out her soul 
in song — proclaiming her patriotic creed in the 
melody and harmony of her greatest musical 
genius. 

For weeks the monster concert had been in prep- 
aration. It was Toscanini's idea. Ardent patriot 
that he is, unfitted by myopia for military duties^ 



164 The Spirit op Italy 

lie could think of no better way to render service to 
his country. Needless to say, his proposition met 
with enthusiastic popular approval. The services 
of every available operatic artist and of hundreds 
of accomplished amateurs were speedily secured. 
There was to be nothing small about the affair. 
The great Arena was chosen as the most suitable 
scene. The chorus was to number at least 1,500, 
while an orchestra of 300 members, supplemented 
by an augmented military band, was organized. 
And while Signor Toscanini assumed the artistic 
direction the head of the committee on business ar- 
rangements was Signora Toscanini. 

Milan had seen so little of the maestro for many 
years that it seemed to be rediscovering his extraor- 
dinary qualities during the progress of the re- 
hearsals. The local newspapers day by day found 
something new and marvellous in his genius. 

"He who has not seen Arturo Toscanini while he 
was conducting a rehearsal," wrote one astonished 
Milanese journalist, "has missed one of the most 
extraordinary experiences of his life." 

And one of the principal members of the orches- 
tra told another newspaper man something that we 
of New York already know so well. "There is 
something irresistible in that baton of Toscanini's," 
said he. "It is truly magical! It has eloquence, 
suggestiveness, power and authority that we our- 
selves cannot explain. It fascinates, transforms, 
makes us understand with our souls things that 
pur intellects could not grasp." 



The Spirit of Italy 165 

What skill in the making of the programme and 
what understanding of the mentality of his com- 
patriots Toscanini showed! All the music (with 
the exception of one number) was Verdi's. How 
else could it have been? We of America are too apt 
to think of him simply as the composer of some 
of the more popular operas in existence. We love 
him for the undying charm of his spontaneous mel- 
ody, the unaffected sincerity of his "Trovatore," 
his "Traviata" and his "Kigoletto"; for the gor- 
geous setting and dramatic fluency of his "Aida." 
( Unfortunately too many of us have still to reach 
a full appreciation of his later "Otello" and "Fal- 
staff." But we shall get there in time!) 

Here in Italy, however, every one knows that 
nearly all Verdi's earlier works — those that we 
never hear in America — were inspired by patriotic 
ardor and had a patriotic purpose. So it was prin- 
cipally from these, to us, unknown operas that 
Toscanini selected his choral numbers — from "La 
Battaglia di Legnana," which was composed at the 
request of Mazzini's short lived Roman Republic 
in 1849, and which dealt with the defeat of the Ger- 
man Emperor Frederick Barbarossa by the League 
of Lombard Cities; from "Nabucco," composed in 
1842, which contained an aria which has been de- 
scribed as "the first lyric canto of the great poem 
of the Italian Revolution"; from "Attila," com- 
posed in 1840, in which the Roman hero declares 
to the Hun chieftain : "Take all the universe, but 
Ifalv leave to me!" and which at the first 1 per- 



166 The Spibit op Italy 

formance in Venice, then under Austrian rule, 
created a scandal; from "I Lombardi," which for 
fear its sentiments might offend Vienna, the Aus- 
trian Archbishop at Milan tried to have "cut," his 
lordship, however, having to bow to Verdi's in- 
flexible refusal to permit its mutilation. Last but 
not least came Verdi's "Hymn of the Nations," 
written for chorus with tenor soloist for the Inter- 
national Exposition at London, in 1862 — a cantata 
for which his friend Arrigo Boito, who was one of 
Garibaldi's soldiers in 1866, provided the poem, 
and which includes a most effective contrapuntal 
treatment of "God Save the King" (or Queen, as 
it then was), the "Marseillaise" and the Italian 
"Marcia Reale." 

"The Hymn of the Nations," you see, was the 
climax of the patriotic crescendo at which Tosca- 
nini aimed. And the effect he sought was exactly 
the effect obtained. The enthusiasm of the immense 
assembly grew steadily as the concert progressed. 
It was nearly midnight when the hymn ended in 
a grand fortissimo. Toscanini in a lofty stand, 
facing the singers massed on the steps leading to a 
beautiful Corinthian portico of spotless white 
marble, the great orchestra at his feet, deservedly 
shared the honors of the evening with Verdi and 
must have felt it was the proudest moment in his 
life as cheer after cheer came from 100,000 throats 
while the vast oval of the arena seemed a seething 
storm-tossed sea of hats and handkerchiefs. 

Suddenly he picked up his baton again, gave a 



The Spirit of Italy 167 

signal, and the orchestra and military band com- 
bined struck np the blood-stirring strains of "The 
Royal March." The cheering increased in intensity. 
But the capping of the climax came when the con- 
cert was closing with Mamelli's "Battle Hymn" 
(which ends in a sort of "rebel yell") and "The 
Garibaldi March," after all Italy's best war song. 
Bless your heart, how that "Garibaldi March" did 
get them! The full moon had just burst through 
a cloud. Some quick-witted chap on the distant 
confines of the arena rolled up an evening paper 
and set fire to it. The idea instantly caught on. 
In two minutes thousands of others had followed 
his example. 

The effect was startling. It seemed as though 
tens of thousands of wills-o'-the-wisp had sprung 
from the earth. And while these fantastic pyro- 
technics played their pranks, dancing with mad 
glee in the midnight breeze, a hundred thousand 
Italian voices joined with the monster chorus on 
the temple steps in chanting the martial music of 
the red shirt hero, the Marseillaise of Italy : 
"Va fuori d'ltalia! 
Va fuori stranier!" 

"Begone from Italy! Stranger, begone!" sang 
the chorus (trained, by the way, by our own Giulio 
Setti, the famous chorus master of the Metropolitan 
Opera Company). 

"Begone from Italy! Stranger, begone!" thun- 
dered the audience in response. 

What a scene! What an explosion of human 



168 The Spirit of Italy 

emotion ! What an apotheosis of patriotism ! Tears 
rolled down the cheeks of hundreds of wounded 
soldiers occupying reserved seats. Tears filled the 
eyes of the groups of veterans from the Verdi Home 
for Aged Artists. In what eye in the great throng 
was there not a tear? Poor in spirit, bankrupt 
of soul, the man who did not feel his eyelash mois- 
ten, indeed, his whole being thrill, as he heard 
repeated again and again : 

"Begone from Italy ! Stranger, begone !" Words 
one unconsciously paraphrased into : 

"Begone from Belgium! Stranger, begone!" 

Do I succeed in conveying to you just a faint 
idea of this "Concertissiino" ? Can vou at least 
"see it in a glass, darkly" ? 

To make you see it "face to face," by word or 
pen, one must be another Swinburne. 

Who were there of Milan's "personalities"? 
Don't expect me to tell you. To discover any one 
you knew in that monster audience seemed miracu- 
lous. Signor Gatti-Casazza took me to the Arenn 
— fortunately ! I thought, of course, he would have 
a box or something equivalent, but, in his custom- 
ary democratic way, he had chosen a pair of most 
inconspicuous seats from which he never stirred 
the entire three hours ! I notice that in Milan his 
reputation for silence and reserve is even greater 
than in New York. 

Tito Eicordi, head of the big music publishing 



The Spirit of Italy 169 

house, dashing and debonair, the best dressed man 
in Milan, you could pick out without difficulty. 
Giorgio Polacco, I also caught sight of in the crowd, 
and General Secretary F. C. Coppicus, of the 
Metropolitan company, the latter in a newly built 
Italian Renaissance summer suit. Maestro Cleo- 
fonte and Signora Campanini and Secretary and 
Mrs. Julius Daiber, of the Chicago Opera Com- 
pany, sat near me, while not far off were little Lu- 
crezia Bori and little Emma Trentini. 

Four or five feminine faces also recalled me to 
Broadway. Pretty little Miss Toscanini (her face 
a tanagra reproduction of her father's), in dainty 
white frock with a stunning big Leghorn hat, was 
the leader of a charming band of programme ven- 
ders, each young lady being escorted by a Boy 
Scout — a Giovane Esploratore — in uniform. Rosina 
Storchio, Italy's most distinguished dramatic so- 
prano — a little woman, with brown hair, sparkling 
and expressive eye, and nervous, "temperamental" 
movement — between the first and second parts of 
the programme, laden with flowers, sought the 
wounded soldiers and distributed blossoms right 
and left. 

But of all the "personalities" pointed out to me 
the most interesting was a tall, fine looking, brown- 
ish moustached, broad shouldered man who seemed 
not more than 65 years of age. His name is Arrigo 
Boito, friend and colaborer of Verdi, comrade of 
Garibaldi in 1866 and Senator of the Kingdom. I 
didn't wait for a formal introduction, but ap- 



170 The Spirit of Italy 

proached him at once, telling him I had heard 
his "Mefistofele" when it was first given in America 
years ago, adding : 

"And I hope before long to hear the first Ameri- 
can production of your new opera, 'Nero.' " 

"I hope you will," said Signor Boito with pa- 
ternally benignant smile. 

"But when, Maestro?" I persisted. 

"After the war!" was his gentle but reassuring 
response. "After the war !" 

"Nero!" "After the War!" "Nero!" "Blazing 
Kome!" "After the War!" "Blazing Europe!" "Ne- 
ro!" No "Guglielmo!" "Nero!" "Gulielmo!" 

These are the thoughts that were dancing in my 
brain as I tried and tried to fall asleep in the small 
hours after that night whose story puts my poor 
pen to shame ! 



The Spirit of Italy 171 



XX. 

Anniversary of the Beginning of the War of Na- 
tions — More Than Ever an Optimist — Com- 
memorating Jaures' Assassination — Ex-Priest 
Murri Discusses Crispi and Explains the 
Triple Alliance, 

Como, Sunday, August 1, 1915. 



DAYS of anniversaries these! Days when 
one's thoughts irresistibly revert to the 
past, intimate and remote. Just one 
year ago about the hour I now am writ- 
ing, while sipping tea at Amenonville 
in the Bois de Boulogne, I was stunned 
by the voice of the head waiter, who shouted to the 
band playing "ragtime": 

"Stop that music! The mobilization decree has 
just been posted. Play the Marseillaise!" 

The war of nations had begun ! The Kaiser had 
unchained the dogs! The Star of Bethlehem 
seemed suddenly to suffer an eclipse ! The malevo- 
lent spirit of Frederick the Great (what would 
Carlyle say were he still living?) apparently had 
usurped the throne of the Prince of Peace. Chris- 
tian civilization seemed nothing more than a fragile 
Temple of Cards. It was a return to Polytheism, 
for each belligerent nation as in turn it unsheathed 
its sword, invoked its God of War. Even the Free 



172 The Spirit of Italy 

Thinker who with Matthew Arnold had satisfied 
himself with belief in a "Power, not ourselves, that 
makes for righteousness" wondered if his Master, 
cool, clear, precise, logical, had not been preaching 
a doctrine of self-delusion. 

Looking back to the morning of August 1 one 
year ago, I remember that until the last moment I 
was an Optimist. And now after this twelve 
months of human carnage I dare again to write my- 
self down an Optimist. An Annee Terrible, truly ! 
But my friend, as I looked at the hanging lamp in 
the old Pisa Cathedral the other day, the hanging 
lamp that Galileo so often watched with scientific 
eye, I thought of all the horrors of these twelve 
months of modern history, and the seemingly deadly 
blows being dealt to modern civilization and found 
a comforting thought in the historic utterance of 
that great Italian : 

"E pur si muove !" — And yet she moves ! 

So why not still be an Optimist? Why not be- 
lieve that these agonies are the world's birth pains 
that precede a new order of things — Humanity's 
new heaven and new earth? 

Pardon this exordium. Remember I'm a Metho- 
dist preacher's son, and if "these few remarks" 
smack of the pulpit or arouse the suspicion that I 
have brought with me to Italy a barrel of my 
father's old sermons be indulgent; for just now I 
can hear the bells of the little Catholic church 
away above my hotel, on the crest of Mount Bru- 
nate, aglow in the afternoon sun, summoning to 



1?hb Spirit op Italy l?3 

vespers the faithful who will receive a real bene- 
diction from the lips of the 90-year-old Garibaldino 
priest, Don Giuseppe Bernasconi. 

^5^ «^y" ^5* 

Yesterday throughout Italy the Socialists, who 
form such a large proportion of the voters of this 
country (last election in this district of Como 
alone they cast in round numbers 8,000 votes for 
their candidate, who was beaten by a majority of 
only 300 votes by his opponent, Signor Carcano, 
the present Minister of the Treasury) held meet- 
ings commemorative of the assassination by a 
madman of the great French Socialist Jean Jaures, 
as he was taking his after-dinner coffee in the little 
Cafe du Croissant in the rue Montmartre, Paris. 
Here, as in France, Socialists of every phase revere 
his memory as devoutly as any believer ever re- 
vered the memory of a saint. In fact, there was an 
intense rivalry between the Avanti, the newspaper 
organ of what is left of the anti-intervention Social- 
ists, and the Populo d'ltalia, of which Mussolini, 
leader of the war advocates of the party, as to 
which should have place of honor and burn the 
most incense at Jaures' shrine. Mussolini seems 
to have had the best of it, for yesterday he pub- 
lished a letter from another eminent French Social- 
ist, the veteran Edouard Valliant, a survivor of 
the Paris Commune and one of the most intimate 
friends of Jaures. 



174: The Spirit of Italy 

"Most willingly I share with you my profound 
regret on this sad anniversary,' 7 wrote Monsieur 
Valliant, "which reminds us of the odious assassin- 
ation which snatched from us Jaures, because I 
know so well the admiration and sympathy with 
which Jaures, had he lived, would have followed 
your political action, your efforts in the cause of 
the Allies, and the joy with which he would have 
hailed your success when Italy, noble Italy, assum- 
ing at the same time its historic mission, its duty 
to achieve its unity, has added its armies to those 
of the Allies in the common struggle of human 
justice, of popular liberty and of the independence 
and autonomy of nations against the assault, the 
aggression, of Austro- German military imperialism 
seeking to establish a tyrannical overlordship which 
would compel all Europe to pay tribute to it, en- 
slaved and forever incapable of development." 

Strong words these ! And no doubt they will help 
lessen the constantly decreasing remnant of the 
Socialist party that has been lukewarm toward the 
war. 

Today also happens to be the anniversary of the 
formation of the Swiss Confederation away back 
in 1353. Although the national festival of the 
Triune Republic, it is never celebrated with any 
great degree of fervor, and from what I can learn 
from across the frontier (where I spent a few hours 



The Spirit of Italy 175 

yesterday), I would not have been much impressed 
had I gone this afternoon to Belinzona, where Pres- 
ident Motta is announced to make an address. This 
war has proved, to my mind, judging from the tone 
of the leading newspapers of German, French and 
Italian Switzerland, that Switzerland really is a 
confederation rather than a nation. 

No doubt you remember reading some years ago 
about Romolo Murri, the unfrocked priest who mar- 
ried and went into politics and was elected as a 
Democratic member of the Chamber of Deputies. 
He is "out" now, having been beaten at the last 
election; but he still keeps up his literary work 
and has just published a book, "La Croce e la 
Spada" — "The Cross and the Sword" — in which he 
discusses the effects of the war on Christianity and 
the Catholic Church. He has now begun another 
book in which he proposes to consider in all its 
phases the conduct and attitude of the Papacy dur- 
ing the war — a book which can be completed only 
when the war has ended. 

Yesterday Signor Murri published a very inter- 
esting review of the recently issued volumes of the 
parliamentary discourses of the great Italian 
statesman, Francesco Crispi, whom Murri says is 
the only really great statesman Italy has had since 
Cavour. One of the most interesting quotations 
from Crispi cited by Murri — interesting it seems to 



176 The Spirit op Italy 

me and timely — deals with the origins of the Triple 
Alliance denounced by Italy so recently. Says 
Crispi : 

"We were in 1877 when we felt the need of an 
alliance. It was a moment when we suspected that 
the Government of a nation on the other side of the 
Alps had it in mind to resuscitate the pontifical 
question; in fact, we had the proofs in hand and 
were positive that it was willing to risk a military 
expedition against us. You remember the fortifi- 
cation of Kome we ordered. It was the first work 
of the Minister of War, Mezzacapo. It was also 
thought necessary by the Ministry of which De- 
pretis was the head that I be sent abroad on an 
official mission." 

This mission, it appears, was in fact to effect an 
agreement with Germany. Crispi first went to 
Paris — whence came the threat — and spoke with 
Gambetta, who the year afterward was to come into 
power and change the policy of France toward the 
Vatican and Italy. Other reasons, however, arose 
to make Italy feel the need of an alliance. Things 
wenij badly for the country from 1878 to 1882. 
Twice propostions for co-operation with England 
in Egyptian affairs fell through. The Berlin Con- 
gress was profitless and France was permitted by 
Bismarck to occupy Tunis. Finally in 1882 the 
alliance was made with Germany, already allied 
with Austria, with which Italy also made her 
pact. 



The Spieit of Italy 177 

Crispi, according to Mum, upheld the Triple 
Alliance for the following basic reasons : 

Given the hostility of France and the danger of 
aggression from that quarter, Italy could not re- 
main isolated in Europe. 

Therefore, to escape isolation, alliance with the 
central empires together with an alliance with Eng- 
land on the sea. But England then was not making 
alliances and would only treat of "friendship." 

The triplice must not exclude a policy of liberty 
of action for the Balkan nations. When Bulgaria 
elected Ferdinand as prince and Kussia opposed 
it, supported by a majority of the Powers, it was 
Crispi who won the game for Bulgaria and Ferdi- 
nand. 

However, points out Murri, foreseeing that the 
time might come when Italy would be compelled to 
combat Austria, and knowing that a nation could 
not raise its voice unless it is strong, when he was 
in power Crispi worked for the reorganization ana 
increase of the military forces. National finances 
were not in a condition to permit much being ac- 
complished. Prudence was the only policy. And 
when he was questioned in Parliament regarding 
the dissolution of the Trent and Trieste Committee 
in Home, Crispi replied to the enthusiastic and 
bellicose Irredentists : 

"If you expect your ideas to prevail you should 
adopt a different system. It is not an alliance, but 
two and a half million bayonets we need!" 

Crispi, says Murri, believed he had done much 



178 The Spirit of Ital* 

for Italy in giving her the voice of a Great Power. 
He believed in a strong foreign policy. Meanwhile, 
he aimed at reorganizing the country, at giving 
it a definite will and awaiting new opportunities. 
"Notable qualities as a statesman had Francesco 
Crispi," adds Romolo Murri. "Great was his love 
of his country, sure his vision, tenacious his will, 
ready his genius and his speech. He ruled with 
authority, but notwithstanding his frequent arbi- 
trary acts he was always respectful of the Legisla- 
tive authorities and constitutional liberties, this 
haughty, imperious Sicilian." 

I make this quotation regarding Crispi because 
too many of us know too little about him and the 
part he took in the now defunct Triple Alliance. 

There are two or three other names of persons 
and things Italian that are constantly being men- 
tioned in the news from this country during tne 
war about which I may say a word. With the na- 
tional hymns of all the belligerents we are quite, 
familiar — that of Italy excepted. How many 
Americans know the "Marcia Reale" when they 
hear it? I didn't until I got used to it over here. 
It is by no means a masterpiece, but it is snappy 
and spirited and makes you step lively. It was 
composed by an obscure Piemontese bandmaster 
in the days of Carlo Alberto, father of Vittorio 
Emanuele II. 



The Spirit of Italy 179 

The "Garibaldi March" — perhaps you have heard 
that. If you have heard it once I'm sure it will 
always linger somewhere in your memory. Sim- 
plicity itself, its simplicity and directness make it 
one of the best "popular" tunes in the world. It 
has the swing of "Marching Through Georgia," 
just as the "Marcia Reale" makes you think of 
"Dixie." 

The words of the "Garibaldi March" were writ- 
ten by a central Italian poet, Luigi Mercantini, and 
the music by another bandmaster, Alessio Olivieri, 
a native of that birthplace of so many fine fiddles, 
Cremona. 

The "Hymn of Mameli," which enjoys about as 
much popularity as the "Garibaldi March," sug- 
gests the style of "My Maryland." It sounds more 
like a real hymn. In fact, a few Sundays ago a 
military mass in the Udine Cathedral, attended by 
Gen. Cadorna and his staff, at the close of the ser- 
vice the organist struck up the "Mameli Hymn." 
Instantly every soldier in the church joined in, and 
the effect, it is said, was electric. Mameli was a 
Genovese and a dear friend of Garibaldi. He was 
fatally wounded by a French bullet in Rome in 
1849 and died shouting "Viva PItalia !" He wrote 
the hymn in 1847 and a Genovese composer, Michele 
Novara, made the music. 

I heard Verdi's music to another "Mameli 
Hymn" last Monday evening. It is very fine, but 
I like Novara's better, though the melody of the 
"Garibaldi March" stirs my blood more than any 



180 The Spirit op Italy 

other. Buy them all, "try them on your piano," 
and see if you don't agree with me. 

D'Annunzio at last has been heard from. He has 
made a flight in an aeroplane over Trieste. The 
news from "the front" (by way of the Galleria of 
Milan) says that he had provided himself with a 
sack of postal cards bearing his picture and some 
original patriotic verses which he emptied upon 
the heads of the "unredeemed" residents of the "un- 
redeemed" city. The Galleria is eagerly waiting 
for the Austrian official communique to learn the 
enemy's account of the poetic bombardment. Vien* 
na's silence is suspicious. The casualties may have 
exceeded the Irredentists' fondest hopes ! 



The Spirit of Italy 181 



XXI. 

The Pope's Vain Appeal for Peace— How Italy Re- 
ceived the Kaiser's Disavowal of Responsibility 
for War — Preparing the Public Mind for 
Italy's Entry Into the Balkans — Trieste's 
Economic Future. 

Milan, Wednesday, August 4, 1915. 

OPE BENEDICT'S appeal for peace— 
mJ "misdirected," a radical paper says — 

has fallen on deaf ears as far as Italy 
is concerned. The impending abandon- 
ment of Warsaw by the Russians is ac- 
cepted by all classes here as a prudent 
strategic move. The laconic official announcements 
of Gen. Cadorna daily renew confidence in the 
Italian army. 

I can detect no wavering, not the least indication 
of a depression in the spirit of the Italian people, 
who, looking back over the events of the last twelve 
months, cherish no illusions as to the difficulties 
which their own campaign against Austria presents 
— tremendous difficulties, I might say — or the re- 
moteness of a final pact of peace. 

However, if in their anniversary days (wasn't it 
just a year ago that Paris breathed that great sigh 
of relief on hearing that England had declared 
war against Germany?). Italy needed a "bracer, " 




182 The Spirit op Italy 

it was at hand in the speech of the Kaiser. Of 
course, officially, Italy is "not in a state of war 
with Germany." There have been rumors of Ger- 
man soldiers having been captured in the fighting 
on the Italo-Austrian frontier, but Italian armv 
officers with whom I have talked tell me that among 
the 17,000 or more prisoners so far taken by the 
Italians there is not a real German. Doubteless if 
there had been it would have been officially an- 
nounced. Germany, it is felt here, wants to delay 
direct war on Italy as long as possible. She has 
a good many hundred million dollars of invest- 
ments of one sort or another in this country of 
which she is not unmindful. 

J8T 3F" ^5" 

State of war or no state of war, the anti-German 
feeling steadily grows in intensity, and the Kais- 
er's solemn oath, "Before God and before history 
that my conscience is clear, that I did not want 
war," has been received with a universal roar of 
derision. Under the title, "Innocence," the Cor- 
Here della Sera, discussing the War Lord's utter- 
ances, says : 

"Ought we to say that the German Emperor has 
perjured himself before God? However, if we 
consider the facts, there can be no doubt that God 
is called upon to be a false witness." 

The Secolo, the other big newspaper of Milan, is 
more blunt. It quotes the Emperor's oath as the 
text of its leading editorial and declares : 

"Europe and the civilized world have already re- 



The Spirit of Italy 183 

plied: 'Your Majesty, you lie! The German 
people, perhaps on the authority of their Emperor, 
may endeavor to continue the falsehood, may try 
to justify themselves before humanity, to cry aloud 
so that the echo may go down to posterity. But 
the lie is not going to live, and if the German people 
were deceived, if through too much credulity they 
swear by the word of their ruling classes, Europe 
may at most excuse them, but it cannot allow itself 
to be deceived — the imperial oath' is the cry of a 
conscience in the convulsion of remorse united with 
the cry of rabid impotence." 

Public opinion in Italy is yet divided as to the 
wisdom of the nation's armed forces co-operating 
directly with the other members of the Quadruplice 
at the Dardanelles or in France. Mussolini, the 
war Socialist leader, favors such action if there 
are no good military reasons against it. 

"If it is possible," he says, "it is necessary. With 
Trent and Trieste occupied," he contends, "the 
Italians at most will have only closed the first plan 
of the war, which must continue until the enemy is 
totally defeated. Only thus can Trent and Trieste 
become securely a part of Italy. In a word, every 
partial victory of the nations of the Quadruplice 
will be illusory unless followed by a general r vic- 

tory." 

And then Mussolini goes on to remind his con- 
stituents (who are "the masses") that it may be 



184= The Spirit of Italy 

necessary to send some Italian army corps to 
France or to the Gallipoli peninsula rather than to 
the Isonzo. "What matters it if Italian troops 
fight north, south, east or west? The essential 
thing is to win. As for men — Italy's resources are 
sufficient for every need. There are several mil- 
lions alreadv under arms and five classes still to 
call on — nearly 2,000,000 more. 

The foregoing will help give an idea of the spirit 
of Italv in these trving hours, when the war cloud 
which hangs over Europe, and even parts of Asia 
and Africa, looks dark and more fateful than ever. 
Strange the irony of things that should just at this 
time reveal the storv of the alleged American at- 
tempt some months ago to subsidize the Italian 
Socialists in a peace propaganda. Indeed, were it 
true that it was Andrew Carnegie's money that was 
involved, it would only present Mr. Carnegie as a 
latter day Mrs. Partington trying to sweep back 
the Atlantic Ocean with a 50-cent broom. 

Even poor Romain Holland, whom we all must 
love for his wonderful "Mean Christopher' and who 
has been working for peace ever since last August, 
has thrown up his hands in despeair. His efforts, 
he confesses, have been "at miserable failure." 
"No one," he laments, "'wants to hear any other 
voice than his own passion." 



By the way, Italy is getting over its attack of 



The Spirit of Italy 185 

spyphobia — if I may coin a word — of which it, like 
other belligerent countries, had such an acute at- 
tack. It now turns out that the supposed spy 
signals on the Metropolis Hotel in the Piazza del 
Duomo here were both innocent and harmless lights 
on a roof garden, of the nature of which the police 
were quite aware. The charges against the pro- 
prietor and his assistants all fell through. 

So, too, with the spy charges against the monks 
in the monastery at Bari, on the Adriatic coast, 
which has been bombarded by Austrian aeroplanes, 
and against the sacristan of the church at Ancona, 
also charged with aiding the bombarding enemy by 
signals. The sacristan, however, has been sent for 
interment to Sardina, much, it appears, to the 
displeasure of the islanders, whose newspaper, 
Nuova Sardegna, refuses to believe in the sacris- 
tan's innocence, and says that Sardinia will gladly 
care for Austrian prisoners, but protests against 
being made the guardian of an Italian traitor. 

An Italian friend of mine in New York during 
his "neutralist" days (he is not a "neutralist" now, 
I can assure you) used to say that it would be the 
end of Trieste's material prosperity if it were "re- 
deemed" by Italy. Well, I've heard some north of 
Ireland Unionists in my native country predict 
that it would be the end of Irish prosperity (Belfast 
prosperity, they probably meant) if the Home Rule, 



186 The Spirit of Italy 

bill became a law and Irishmen were allowed to 
run Ireland's internal affairs. And I suppose there 
is a certain class of Poles who tremble at the pos- 
sibility (which every liberty lover hopes will be 
realized) of a united autonomous Poland. 

For the benefit of Americans who may have been 
led to believe that an Italian Trieste would mean 
a moribund Trieste, let me quote an authority who 
presents the other side of the case. 

"Instead of Trieste depending on Austria/' say& 
he, "it is quite the contrary. Trieste is the natural 
centre of Levantine commerce. Its hinterland 
needs it as much as Switzerland needs Genoa. Its 
commerce with Turkey the year before last was 
$40,000,000; with Egypt, $37,000,000; with India, 
$29,000,000, while its commerce with Austria- 
Hungary was but $21,000,000 — which is only a mil- 
lion and a half more than its commerce with Italy. 
Trieste owes its prosperity not to Austria, but to 
itself! The Austrian Government has made but 
little sacrifice for Trieste, spending on its port only 
$20,000,000 in the same time that Italy spent $46,- 
000,000 on the port of Genoa. No well established 
industry in Trieste can possibly be injured by its 
annexation to Italy. A healthy plant continues to 
flourish even if the land changes owners." 

Italy has just lost a great artist. Even in these 
war times the newspapers deem it fitting to devote 



The Spirit of Italy 187 

columns to eulogistic biographiees of Flavio Ando, 
who was neither a great general nor a great states- 
man, but simply an actor. But judging from the 
unanimous opinion of his eulogists and biogra- 
phers and of persons of culture with whom I have 
talked, Flavio Ando, who has just passed away in 
his sixty-first year at Pisa was a great actor and an 

honor to the Italian stage. 
rr 
A Sicilian of Palermo, of excellent family, An- 

do's passion for the theatre led him to seek a stage 
career at the age of 17. Kunning away from home 
he joined a strolling company at a salary of a lire 
(20 cents) a day. (Caruso did better than this, 
for I met a man in Pisa who gave him 125 lire for 
singing in an opera in that old city during his first 
season on the stage.) Ando's father, however, re- 
captured him and tried to make a business man of 
him. Useless the effort, and presently his parents 
yielded to his ambition. Before he was 20 he made 
a name for himself as Armand in "Camille." From 
then on he steadily grew in fame — he became Italy's 
most applauded and most beloved "jeune premier.'' 
Before Duse had her "affair" with D'Annunzio 
(Italians say that no one who did not see Duse 
before that entanglement really knows Duse) Ando 
played parts opposite her, always sharing the hon- 
ors, and indeed, frequently outshining her. 

Only a few weeks ago he reappeared at Florence 
at a benefit performance of Kovetta's patriotic 
Bisorgimento drama, "Komanticismo." His re- 



188 The Spirit of Italy 

ception was so enthusiastic that he almost broke 
down. Signora Dabala, wife of General Dabala, 
who is at my hotel, tells me that a more fascinating 
actor could not well be imagined. 

"He was our gentlenian-actor," said she. "Such 
grace of manner ! Such distinction ! And such a 
voice ! I have heard it so often and no tenor could 
move me more!" 

3^" 3Br 35T 

Milan's authorities have faced the alcohol prob- 
lem. The latest ruling is that no liquor containing 
over 21 per cent, alcohol can be sold in public 
houses before 10 o'clock in the morning on work 
days and not at all on Sundays or other holidays. 
Beginning next January restaurants may open at 
7 A. M., to be closed at 1 o'clock in the night. I'm 
glad to be able to say that I have seen very few 
cases of alcoholism during my ramblings in Italy 
since the war begun. "SELF-CONTROL," indeed, 
is written in big letters all over the peninsula. An- 
other revelation to "practical" America of the 
quality of these Latins ! 



T 



The Spirit op Italy 189 



XXII. 

A Prominent Milan Journalist on the Attitude of 
His Compatriots — Independent Spirit of 
Italy's Neivspapers—Need of Trained Hospital 
Nurses — Two Pathetic Incidents. 

Milan, Friday, August 6, 1915. 

HOUGH the expected has happened and 
no one here is surprised to know that at 
last Warsaw is in the hands of the Ger- 
man-Austrian army, the news in the 
morning papers was not pleasant read- 
ing for the Italian public. On top of it 
this afternoon comes the report of the loss of 
another dirigible balloon. Two dirigibles and two 
warships gone! Dark days! However, General 
Cadorna's communique tonight is stimulating with 
the announcement of another batch of Austrians 
captured. At this rate the total number will soon 
be 20,000. 

"I hope you have made note of the spirit mani- 
fested by our people during this trying time," said 
Signor Mario Borsa, editor-in-chief of the Secolo, 
to me this evening. Signor Borsa, by the way, for 
many years was this newspaper's correspondent in 
London. He knows the English well and he has 
many American friends. 

"You can tell them across the Atlantic," he con- 



190 The Spirit of Italy 

tinned, "that our people can do something else than 
play the guitar, grind a barrel organ or dig a New 
York underground railroad. We know how to 
receive bad news without flinching and good news 
without undue exultation. The Austrians sneered 
at us before actual hostilities began. They boasted 
that one Austrian could whip four Italians. They 
have changed their tune. Now they speak of the 
valor of our soldiers and our chivalrous treatment 
of their prisoners. We never spoke desparagingly 
of them and we justly recognize their worth. The 
prisoners we have taken are men worthy of our 
steel. We have no illusions. We have realized all 
along our war would be no military parade." 

Signor Borsa I found appreciated the difficult 
position in which President Wilson finds himself. 
Unlike many other intelligent Italians whom it re- 
quired considerable argument to convince that 
President Wilson is trying to do the right thing, 
he at once conceded the wisdom shown by our 
President. 

"When will the war end?" he repeated. "When? 
Can you foretell? You know as much about it as 
we. So far as I can see, as yet there is no end in 
sight. All I do know is that we in Italy are mak- 
ing every necessary preparation for a winter cam- 
paign, which, for our boys in the mountains, will 
be a terrible test." 

Incidentally, we discussed Italian journalism. 
"We're an independent lot," said Signor Borsa, 
"and we are rather proud of it. Proud, too, that 



The Spirit of Italy 191 

our journalism is a pretty clean journalism and one 
which loses nothing in comparison with the jour- 
nalism of other European nations. There is at 
least one good, strong, well-edited paper in every 
city in Italy, and if you have been reading them yon 
will have seen that each editor does his own think- 
ing." 

"And the censorship?" 

"Very just," was the reply. "It is exceedingly 
strict as regards military matters, but we have 
great freedom in every other respect — more so, I 
think, than the press has in France. We have had 
to reduce the size of our newspapers a quarter or 
a third, but as we have all laid in good supplies of 
paper, we can keep going at the present rate for 
some time to come." 

In passing I take pleasure in saying that Signor 
Borsa, like every other Italian colleague I have 
met this summer, most generously proferred his ser- 
vices, both personally and professionally, assuring 
me that I may "make myself at home" in the Se- 
colons office whenever I came in Milan. 

JF sr 3T 

One of the serious problems confronting Italy is 
the need of hospital nurses. When the war broke 
out there was the same enthusiasm that we saw in 
France and England on the part of the women, 
young and old, to don the picturesque Red Cross 
uniform. 



192 The Spirit op Italy 

"There was such a rush/' said a Eed Cross sur- 
geon to me today, "that we did not know what to 
do with them all. When, after awhile they were 
put to the task of caring for the first detachment of 
wounded soldiers, it is surprising how the ranks 
of these well-intentioned ladies thinned out. They 
were not used to such a labor. Then came the sum- 
mer heat and then health or family reasons took 
away a lot more to the mountains or seashores. 
Already we feel the growing need of more nurses. 
What will it be as the war progresses and the num- 
ber of wounded necessarily increases? All we can 
do is to appeal to the women of Italy to come to 
our aid. It means hard work and sacrifice, but the 
cause is worthy of both. Perhaps some of those 
clever American nurses may hear the call from 
Italy and respond." 

When this is known in America I'm sure there 
will be many an American trained nurse who has 
known and loved Italy, to tender her service in 
some Italian military hospital. 

Few, if any, Americans have had an opportunity 
of seeing such sad sights as has Signora Andreazzi. 
the Boston wife of the Italian-Swiss (and natur- 
alized American) proprietor of the Railroad Res- 
taurant at Chiasso. She saw pass the thousands 
and thousands of Italian women, children and old 
men refugees from Austria — the unfortunates 



The Spirit of Italy 193 

whom the Austrians drove out of the Trieste and 
Trent provinces and whom they sent to Italy by 
way of Switzerland, retaining in internment camps 
their fathers, husbands and sons of military age. 
Signora Andreazzi, with self-sacrificing enthusi- 
asm, worked night and day helping feed and com- 
fort these poor people as they waited in Chiasso to 
be passed across the frontier into their beloved 
Italy. 

"Never, to my dying day," said Signora Andre- 
azzi to me, "shall I forget one incident. One morn- 
ing, on a long train of fugitives, there arrived a 
poor old woman, nearly seventy 1 years of age, her 
hair thin and gray, her cheeks pale and wan, her 
clothes old and worn. What a sight she was ! As 
I handed her a big bowl of soup, I said : 

" 'Are you all alone my good woman?' 

" 'All alone,' she replied. 'They separated me 
from my dear old man somewhere in Austria. My 
two sons are away from our home over there and 
are now fighting for Italy. But my old man — 
we've lived together for nearly fifty years — shall I 
ever see him again? I've nowhere to go without 
him and I don't intend to leave this station until all 
the other trains come along. Perhaps I shall find 
him. They surely would not want to keep an old 
man such as he. Don't you think he will come 
along? And won't you take care of me till he does?' 

"She did not have to ask me twice," continued 
Signora Andreazzi, "and I did what I could for her. 
She scarcely would leave the railroad platform 



194 The Spirit of Italy 

for a moment. Up and down the poor old thing 
walked, hour after hour. Several other trains bear- 
ing hundreds of fugitives arrived, and as they 
pulled in, she approached every old man she saw 
descend from a car to see if he were hers. How 
often she was disappointed! But her hope was 
unshaken. Finally, the second day, late in the 
evening, another crowded train pulled into the sta- 
tion. The old woman, as usual, was on the alert. 
I could not keep my eyes off her, so deeply had she 
aroused my sympathy. Suddenly I heard her give 
a cry and saw her throw up her hands. A little bit 
of an old man had just slipped on to the platform. 
He saw her and ran towards her as she tottered 
towards him. Another moment and they were 
clasped as for eternity in each other's arms !" 

Signora Andreazzi's eyes were filled with tears. 
Her voice seemed to fail her. It was the end of her 
story. Can't you see it all? And are there not 
tears in your eyes, too? 

Here is another sad case which I heard from 
Signora Andreazzi. A handsome young woman — 
an Italian — with a fourteen-months-old baby ar- 
rived at Chiasso a few weeks ago, bound for Italy. 
She was not allowed to cross the frontier, and it is 
doubtful if she can get back to her parents' home 
in Bologna till the end of the war. 

"The young lady," the Signora told me, "was theil 



The Spirit of Italy 195 

wife of a German who had lived in Bologna since 
he was a child. Italy had become his real home, 
but he never was naturalized — an Italian citizen. 
When war broke out, he, in time, was called to Ger- 
many to serve with his class. His wife and baby 
went with him. Kecently his regiment was ordered 
to the front and the wife decided to return to Bo- 
logna with her baby. Reaching Ohiasso, admission 
was refused by the Italian authorities, and, al- 
though her father is, I think, a major in the Italian 
army, and her two brothers also are officers, the 
family has not been able to exert sufficient influ- 
ence to get her a pass. With her husband at the 
front, Germany is a foreign land to her. Her na- 
tive land is barred against her. A case in real life 
of a woman without a country !" 




196 The Spirit of Italy 



XXIII. 

Ada Negri, Italy's Poetess of the People — Hard to 
Find, hut Worth the Endeavor — Her Struggles 
and Success — What Her Sister Italians Are 
Doing for Their Country. 

Milan, Wednesday, August 11, 1915. 

I WANT you to know Ada Negri. Perhaps 
I should say I want you to. know some- 
thing about Ada Negri. I only know 
her a little bit, for I met her for the first 
time this afternoon and had but a half- 
hour with her. But that half-hour left 
an impression on me not likely to be forgotten and 
it is the impression of that impression that I want 
to communicate to you. 

"But who in the world is Ada Negri?" I hear you 
exclaim. 

Not strange! Not so long ago I would have 
asked the same question. But these war months 
in Italy have been months of a sort of exploration 
on my part and in their course I have "discovered" 
Ada Negri. 

You see, I have been looking at Italy in war from 
the man's point of view and I wanted to find out 
what the women of Italy are doing and thinking. 
So some weeks ago I asked a prominent Milan 
newspaperman to suggest the name of some woman 
in Milan who is a leader of thought among her sex. 



The Spirit op Italy 197 

"Ada Negri is just the person you should talk 
with," he promptly responded. 

"Ada Negri?" said I. "I've seen her name signed 
to one or two articles — one of them a splendid tri- 
bute to the women of France — but beyond that I 
don't know who she is." 

"Why," said he, a bit surprised at my ignorance, 
"she is the finest woman poet we have today in 
Italy! Her volume of poems, 'Fatalita,' the first 
she published in 1901, 1 think, has had some twenty* 
five editions. The book shops will tell you that her 
last volume, 'Esilio,' is one of their best sellers 
on the poets' shelf. She represents the best and 
most advanced thought in Italian feminist circles." 

«/^ ^5* J& 

So I "assigned" myself to see Ada Negri at once. 

But it wasn't such an "easy assignment" as you 
may think. I found the apartment house in which 
she lived — about a mile from the cathedral — a very 
nice looking apartment house of five stories, with 
a very intelligent and certainly a very discreet 
concierge. "Is Signora Negri at home?" "No, 
Signor." "Do you know when she will be home?" 
"No, Signor — at least not before evening." "She is 
out a great deal?" "A great deal, Signor. The 
Poetessa (so he spoke of her) is a very, very busy 
woman. She has so much more to do since the war 
began. And she is tired when she does come home." 

All I could do was leave my card with my ad- 
dress, requesting a note giving me a date. But 



198 The Spirit op Italy 

several days passed and no response. Then I Wrote 
as explanatory a letter as I could, begging an in- 
terview. A week passed. Still no reply. Another 
visit. Yes, the concierge had given my card and 
doubtless the letter had reached her "but she is 
such a busy woman." And she still was out! I 
left another card with another appeal and departed. 

Some days later, having heard nothing from 
Signora Negri, my curiosity to see this Italian 
feminist, who seemed as difficult to capture as the 
Castello Sforza in its most formidable days, urged 
me to renew my attack. Again the same response 
from the concierge. 

"La Poetessa was not at home." 

"Are you quite, quite sure?" I asked him, hand- 
ing him a sigaro toscano (one of those long, thin, 
black, two and a half cent cigars that they sell on 
Grand street) and looking him straight in the eye. 
"Go up and see and, if she really is there, tell her 
that I am a most harmless looking human being,, 
even if I am an American." 

He must have been amused, for he smiled be- 
nignly (or perhaps it was the sigaro toscano) and 
forthwith disappeared up the winding stairway. 

Five minutes had elapsed when back he came, 
this time really radiant of visage. 

"Si, Signor! la Poetessa is at home! She says 
she will see you !" 

At last! And now to face this proud, exclusive 



The Spirit of Italy 199 

personage! How shall I open the conversation? 
How shall I behave if she freezes me with the po- 
liteness which is the severest punishment for im- 
pudence? 

So I was thinking when on the door of her apart- 
ment my eyes met a sign which translated into 
English read : 

"Young Women's Christian Association." 

"What have I run into?" I asked myself. "Fm 
looking for Italy's leading poetess, the nation's 
most eloquent exponent of the rights of woman and 
most enthusiastic apostle of Socialism, and here I 
am at the headquarters of an Italian Young Wom- 
en's Christian Association !" 

A sweet faced maid of 18 years admitted me and 
showed me into a most simply furnished anteroom, 
telling me Signora Negri would see me in a mo- 
ment. In such an ambient my fears melted away 
and I quite forgot them when the room door opened 
and I saw advance toward me with extended hand a 
woman somewhere in her thirties, of medium height 
and compact frame, clad in a simple black frock 
and simple white blouse ; her face somewhat broad, 
her nose rather Celtic, her thick hair, evidently 
once of raven hue, faintly streaked with silver 
threads, cut short to her broad shoulders in old 
Italian style. 

And her eyes — Ah ! what eyes ! Black as night ! 
When you look into those eyes you see nothing else. 
And when she takes your hand in an honest clasp 



200 The Spirit of Italy 

and gently asks your pardon for not having con- 
sented to see you sooner, the glow, the sincerity, the 
depth of those eyes all combine to transfigure that 
— may I say? — commonplace face in which you 
then feel is expressed the beauty of a great soul. 



Signora Negri didn't have to apologize to me. I 
saw at once why she had sought to avoid an inter- 
view with a strange American newspaper man in 
spite of (or because of) her own experience in 
journalism. It was not haughtiness, nor exclusive- 
ness, but real diffidence on her part. She showed 
this quality again when I tried to get her to talk 
about herself and her life. She delicately evaded 
my questions. It was for others to tell me of her 
struggles — of the poverty of her childhood days, 
when she lived in the little village of Motta-Vis- 
conti, in the plains of Lombardy, remote from city, 
lake or mountain, with a widowed mother, who 
toiled long hours in the neighborhood woollen mill 
that her daughter, in whom she had a clairvoyant 
faith, might have such education as the village com- 
mon school offered. 

Others told me how she reached the position of 
teacher in the village primary school with sixty 
noisy little urchins to humanize; how she saved 
what pennies she could from her meagre salary to 
buy newspapers and books; how in her leisure 
hours at night she dreamed and wrote about a 



The Spirit of Italy 201 

world within her that she daily was discovering 
and a great world without that she had to create 
out of her own imagination. 

Sad life was hers, you say. But genius sur- 
mounts all obstacles. Ada Negri had the divine 
spark within her. Amid all these sordid surround- 
ings she had faith in herself, in her destiny. This 
child of "the people" — how proud she is to own her 
origin! — was an optimist. She dreamed of fame 
for herself and — of happiness for the evening of 
her faithful mother's life. 

All this Signora Ada Negri did not tell me. Nor 
did she tell me what a literary sensation was cre- 
ated in Italy by the first two or three poems which 
she dared to send to a popular weekly publication. 
Nobody knew anything about her personality until 
Signora Sofia Bisi Albini, wife of the eminent 
sculptor — herself a woman of fine literary quality 
— investigated and discovered. She it was who in- 
sisted upon Signora Negri publishing her poems in 
a volume and who found a publisher. The appear- 
ance of the volume established her at once. Her 
dream had come true ! 



"You want to know something about our Italian 
women and what they are doing?" said Signora 
Negri after her greeting was over. "All I can say 
is that, regardless of social status or other differ- 
ences, they are all mobilized as effectively as are the 



202 The Spirit of Italy 

men. Ten million of us are each making at least 
one pair of woollen stockings or a woollen cap for 
the soldiers. Many of us are making more. A work 
quite as important for our winter campaign in the 
mountains as the manufacture of projectiles, pow- 
der and guns. Don't forget that ! It is the princi- 
pal fact as regards feminine activity in our country. 
No healthy woman in Italy is idle today. A spirit 
of energy and initiative has been awakened in our 
sex in Italy that never before was known to exist. 

"This war is an awful thing, but much good will 
result from it to us Italian women. Already it is 
enlarging our sphere. Young women of the so- 
called upper classes who in the past have lived idle, 
useless lives, just waiting for their parents to find 
husbands for them so that they might gain 'free- 
dom,' are now devoting eight or nine hours a day 
caring, in their own homes and gardens, for the 
children of poor soldiers called to the colors, and 
poor mothers who are earning their livelihood in 
the shops where they are making clothing for the 
men in the army. 

"Think what a change in their daily habits for 
these young ladies ! It is no small matter to attend 
to all the wants of a half dozen babies or children 
of tender years — children who belong to the poorest 
of the poor. Yet that is what the war is teaching 
these young girls of the so-called, middle and aristo- 
cratic classes. That is making for democracy and 
it is a step upward." 

No mistaking Signora Negri's political views. 



The Spirit of Italy 203 

She is a democrat of democrats — a Socialist. "How 
could I be other?" she asked. "I am a daughter of 
the people. Before the war I was an internation- 
alist! — that is, before August, 1914. But when 1 
saw what the war meant I became an intervention- 
alist, and I have come to the conclusion that inter- 
nationalism is as yet impossible. Each nation, like 
each family, is better in its own house. There is no 
roof big enough to cover two families, no matter 
how closely they are related. Of course, I am abso- 
lutely opposed to a war of conquest, but Italy's war 
is simply a war to recover what is rightly hers, to 
re-establish Belgium and to aid the other nations 
who are defending the first principles of Civiliza- 
tion against the brutal doctrine that Might makes 
Right." 

Naturally I asked Signora Negri about the atti- 
tude of Italian women toward the suffrage question. 

"There was a movement in its favor," she said, 
"before the war. Now all such discussions have 
been shelved. It is not so easy to interest our 
Italian women in such matters as in England and 
the United States. Those of us who do look forward 
to the time when our women will take an active 
part in the political life of the nation — thanks to 
our schools, they are broadening in their ideas con- 
stantly — watch with interest the effort of the Eng- 
lish suffragettes for whose Mrs. Pankhurst I have 
intense admiration, and the peaceful achievements 
of the suffragist women of your country. 

"I should be very happy to visit the United 



204 The Spirit of Italy 

States after the war if I spoke English, What a 
country for women it must be!" 

^6 ^5* i^v 

"And now," I said as I was about to leave — for 
Signora, Negri had an engagement to keep at one 
of the many war charities with which she is con- 
nected^ — "how is it that you are in this Protes- 
tant institution?" 

"Why," she said, "simply because I like the at- 
mosphere and I can live comfortably at a reasonable 
cost. Yes, I was born a Catholic, but — well, I sup- 
pose now you might call me a Deist — a Unitarian. 
I admire the spirit of Protestantism and the Young 
Women's Christian Association does a splendid 
work. Here at present reside over thirty young 
girls who earn their livings as stenographers or 
clerks in banks and other financial or industrial 
concerns. I wish you could see what a nice lot of 
girls they are — so intelligent, so well behaved, so 
thoroughly feminine! Some of them are Protes- 
tants, some of them are Catholics, some of them, 
perhaps, have my faith — no one ever asks questions 
as to their religious views in this institution: all 
that is required is that they work for their livings 
and that their characters are good." 

I don't know if any one has translated Signora 
Negri's poems into English. She didn't know, eith- 
er. But if it hasn't been done, surely it is worth 
doing. There is one on "The Salvation Army," 



The Spirit of Italy 205 

which alone will give you a key to the understand-, 
ing of the fineness of this fine woman's nature. I 
left her glad that I had continued to knock at her 
door until I was rewarded by having it open unto 
me. 




206 The Spirit of Italy 



XXIV. 

Como Awakes to Celebrate Feragosto — War Inter- 
feres Only Partially with a Popular Annual 
Holiday — A Scotchman in Italy — Wagner 
Still Has His Friends — A Waiter Explains. 

Como, Monday, August 16, 1915. 

ESTAL days these — Saturday, Sunday 
E-H and today — in Lombardy and especially 
in and around Milan. Saturday after- 
noon I was surprised to see the war time 
quiet of the wharves of Como and the 
pretty Piazza Cavour in front of my 
hotel replaced by a bustle and activity produced by 
an influx of hundreds and hundreds of people, 
young and old, all dressed in their best bib-and- 
tucker. 

Steamboats for months immobilized had their 
steam up and there was a constant rush from the 
railway station to the gangplanks, while Cook's 
agent, Signor Bellosta, after an involuntary vaca- 
tion of twelve months, found himself the busiest 
man in town ! 

"Why all these excursionists? Why all this 
spirit of jollification? Has peace unexpectedly 
been declared?" were the questons I put to Boniface 
Zaccheo, of the Metropole. 

"Don't you know," he replied, with his face 
wreathed in smiles at the prospect of doing some 



The Spirit of Italy 207 

real business, "don't you know that this is Fer- 
agosto? In Milan especially and throughout Lom- 
bardy the 14th, 15th and 16th of August are the 
greatest holidays of the year. Nobody but hotel 
men, restaurant keepers and railway employes 
thinks of working on these days !" 

"But I'd suppose the war would interfere with its 
observance," I remarked. 

"And it has," was the answer. "Two years ago 
over 200,000 persons left Milan to spend these three 
days on Lake Como, Maggiore, Lugano and Garda, 
or to climb our own mountains or the mountains of 
Switzerland — many of them going in parties of ten, 
twenty, thirty or even fifty. This year I'm afraid 
there won't be more than 100,000 Milanese out of 
the city, and their area of recreation will be much 
more restricted. However, as you see, they are out 
to enjoy themselves, war or no war, and for the mo- 
ment Como looks a bit more like her old self." 

It is worth recording these facts as an evidence of 
the spirit prevailing in Italy these war days. I may 
also record the fact that last Saturday night a very 
successful amateur concert was given in the beauti 
ful hall of Como's Institute Carducci for the benefit 
of one of the local war charities, the Assistenza 
Morale, of which Signor Enrico Musa, a big silk 
manufacturer and president of the institute, is 
chairman, which was organized by an American 
visitor to the town, assisted by Miss Bessie Byams, 



208 The Spirit of Italy 

the talented musical comferenciere of New York, 
and in which several nice English and Australians 
and three Trieste refugee violinists took part. 

The evening, which wound up with the entire 
audience singing patriotic songs, seemed to have 
been thoroughly enjoyed by a public consisting of 
the nicest people of Conio, from the Prefect Com- 
mendatore Olivieri and Signora Olivieri down. Av- 
vocato Enrico Catanneo, the legal defender of Por- 
ter Charlton, made an eloquent address, thanking 
the Americans and English for their sympathetic 
efforts. A substantial sum, which included a contri- 
bution from Signor Otto H. Kahn, of New York, 
was turned over to the committee. The concert was 
an effective reply to the statement published in an 
Austrian newspaper ten days ago that English and 
Americans were fleeing from Italy to Switzerland 
"to escape the disorders and discomforts caused in 
Italy by the war !" 

Coming back to Feragosto: Nobody I asked 
could tell me how it originated, but a musty old 
Italian encyclopaedia explained that it meant Feria- 
fair of August, and probably is a survival of a mid- 
summer jollification of pagan days. It seems to 
take the place of our Labor Day, but it is also the 
custom to make presents to your employes and ser- 
vants on this festal occasion. This year, I'm told, 
the presents — "mancia," is the popular Italian 
word — were few and far between, for, as a rule, the 
odd pennies all go to the war charities, and knowing 
this no one complained. J 



The Spirit of Italy 209 

Mr. Kenneth Muir is one of Como's most esteemed 
citizens. As his name indicates, he is a Scotchman. 
His wife is a charming Milanese. We all became 
acquainted at the benefit concert and found we had 
a lot of interests in common. Mr. Muir is the repre- 
sentative in Italy of a big English corporation. His 
office is in Milan, but, like me he is a "commuter/' 
He has lived in Italy for nearly fifteen years. Speak- 
ing the language fluently and being what we Amer- 
icans would call a "good mixer," he ought to have 
learned something about the Italians in his many, 
many travels from Sicily and the "toe of the boot" 
to the Alps. 

"When vou reallv know the Italians," said he to 
me yesterday, "you will find there are no more 
charming people in the world. I know no place I 
would rather live than in this country. Time and 
again I could have gone back to England with finan- 
cial profit to myself, but I couldn't leave this lovely 
land." 

Nor could I blame Mr. Muir when I saw his home. 
A charming villa it is, on the north slope of Como's 
outskirts, surrounded by a two-acre garden full of 
flowers and fruit trees, such a home as you would 
pay at least $2,500 a year rent for at Pelham Manor 
or Stamford. (Como is just about as far by train 
from Milan as Stamford is from New York. ) And 
what do you think Mr. Muir pays? One thousand 
eight hundred francs ! Less than $360 ! No wonder 
he prefers living in Italy ! 

"They're such a quick-witted people," Mr. Muir 



210 The Spirit of Italy 

remarked while telling me some of his experiences. 
"They catch your ideas before you have fully ex- 
pressed them. I never had a better lot of clerks or 
sub-agents anywhere in the world. We in England, 
and doubtless you in America— that is the masses 
of our people — have been so apt to think of the 
'dago' as the 'macaroni eater' or 'the organ grinder.' 
How ashamed of yourself you become when you 
meet the Italian on his native soil! And what a 
splendid showing they are making in this war ! And 
how thoroughly their hearts are in it ! Family after 
family is sending its sons to the front almost with- 
out a tear. They know it is their duty to their 
Italia diletta, and to act otherwise is for them un- 
thinkable." 



Mr. Muir, by the way, was at one time interested 
in the Gramophone company and was one of the 
first to experiment with making of orchestra "rec- 
ords" in Italy. 

"We had a lot of trouble in our experiments," he 
told me. "Finally we got a fairly good orchestra 
'record' and invited Arturo Toscanini to come and 
pass judgment on it. He came and listened — with 
much suffering I'm sure. When it was over he had 
very little to say beyond remarking to our conduc- 
tor: 

" Ton only had three violins in your orchestra. 
You should have at least four.' 



The Spirit op Italy 211 

" 'That man hears everything !' our conductor re- 
marked as Toscanini went away." 

Another story about Toscanini that Mr. Muir 
told me : He was rehearsing for a performance of 
"Mefistofele" at the Regio Opera of Turin. The 
composer, Arigo Boito, who was present, thought 
Toscanini was taking the music too slowly, but he 
didn't dare tell the Maestro so directly. With fine 
tact and finer humor, the composer next morning 
sent Toscanini a nice new score of "Mefistofele" 
with the inscription : 

"Al va — lentissimo Maestro." 

"Did Toscanini take the hint?" I asked Mr. Muir. 

"Do you think he did?" responded my Scotch 
friend with a quizzical smile. 

"I wouldn't like to say," I replied. 

"Neither would I," said the canny Scot. "Why 
not ask Toscanini himself when you meet him?" 

"Whv? Not!" 

And we relit our pipes, Mr. Muir and I. 

Talking about music reminds me that Toscanini 
is organizing a short opera season at the Dal Verne 
Theatre in Milan in September. The Dal Verne is 
the second opera house of the Lombardi capital — 
not nearly so elegant as the famous Scala over 
whose destinies Signor Giulio Gatti-Casazza, now 
the honored impresario of New York's Metropolitan 
Opera House, presided so many years. 



212 The Spirit of Italy 

The repertoire at tlie Dal Verne will include 
five operas. Will any of them be a Wagner opera? 
It is understood not. However, don't imagine for a 
moment that the cultivated musical people of Italy 
have put Wagner on the "black list." The other 
evening here in Como a party of seven or eight 
young men, all soldiers, some of them officers, were 
taking coffee in the music room of my hotel. Sev- 
eral of them I knew. Onei of these latter is Dr. 
Veneziani, a young scientist, who escaped from 
Trieste and joined the Italian army as a volunteer 
— a most engaging young fellow ! Sombody played 
a few chords on the piano. The doctor at once was 
interested. In a moment it was discovered that he 
was an amateur of music. Would he play? Why, 
yes. And he did play — played as few amateurs that 
I ever heard could play. And what do you suppose 
he played? "Tristan und Isolde !" 

He seemed to know almost the entire score by 
heart, and he played for over an hour, to the delight 
of all the other Italians in his party and a dozen 
more who were attracted from outside. 

"Magnificent! Bravo!" they all exclaimed. 

"Wonderful music !" said the doctor. "There is 
only one Wagner. Thank God, he had nothing to 
do with this war! Why, our own Carducci de- 
clared that the 'Death of Isolde' was the finest thing 
he ever heard in music." 

Such is the attitude of the cultivated Italian. And 
yet I see by an American newspaper that there has 
been some fear in New York that the Metropolitan 



The Spirit of Italy 213 

opera season would be exclusively French and 
Italian. Nonsense! Are not we Americans too 
broad-minded to entertain such a thought? 



Wool, wool, wool! Everybody here is talking 
wool! Everybody is collecting all the old woolen 
goods they can find in their houses and shipping 
them to the committees, who send them to the mills 
to be remade into woolen yarn. No old wool is go- 
ing to waste. Eighteen million pairs of woolen 
stockings for the soldiers are called for; three mil- 
lion woolen head covers and one million woolen 
mufflers. Kemember that the soldiers who are fight- 
ing in the mountains are many of them 5,000, 6,000 
and even 9,000 feet above sea level, and winter will 
soon reach them. In fact, already the nights up 
there are frosty. So the women are busy as can be 
knitting, knitting, knitting. But the supply of 
woolen yarn is limited in Italy, and if reports be 
true it is even more limited in Austria and Ger- 
many. No wonder the Central Powers dread an- 
other winter campaign. Italy, however, is pre- 
paring for it and expecting it. 

I've tried to make it clear that "individualism" 
is one of the dominant characteristics of the Italian 
nation, but I've never heard the fact better ex- 
pressed than by the little waiter in the cafe across 
the street. 



214 The Spirit of Italy 

"The only trouble, sir, with us," said he, "is that 
there are thirty-four million people in Italy, and 
these thirty-four million people have thirty-four 
million different brains !" 

He didn't realize that he could not have paid his 
country a higher compliment. 



The Spirit of Italy 215 




XXV. 

Unexpected Visit to Paris — Impressions of the 
French Capital After a Year's Absence — 
People More Confident of Victory Than Ever — 
Not Sad but Serious — Old Friends and Old 
Haunts — A Tragic Incident. 

Paris, Wednesday, August 25, 1915. 

1 DIDN'T expect to visit Paris this sum- 

mer. In fact, I didn't want to. A little 
less than eleven months ago I took leave 
of this Capital of Civilization after hav- 
ing shared with the two million of its 
inhabitants who had not deserted it with 
the Government in the early days of September, or 
who had not been "called to the front," all the emo- 
tions of the indescribable days of the retreat of the 
Allies from Belgium — the days when, so to speak, 
the Germans were "almost in the Bronx" and a 
new siege of Paris seemed almost inevitable; the 
days when the news of the battle of the Marne be- 
gan slowly to filter into the city to be followed at 
last by the assurance of the retreat of the Kaiser's 
invading forces and the triumph of Gen. Joffre's 
strategy. 

Looking back over all these months I find nothing 
impressed on my memory more indelibly than the 
exhibition of splendid self-possession which the 



216 The Spirit of Italy 

masses of the Parisians presented in the face of 
seemingly disastrous reverses and — may I say it? — 
the well-bred self-control, the finely tempered satis- 
faction with which they received the good news of 
victorv. 

It was a deserted Paris, a provincial town, when 
I left) it. Every day appeared like a Sunday. A 
wonderful peace seemed to reign over this usually 
"gay city." And, although when you reflected upon 
its cause you had to shudder, nevertheless there was 
a charm about this tranquility, this simple subur- 
ban air that pervaded everything, this absence of 
movement on streets in other days so full of bustle 
and excitement, that exercised an almost irresist- 
ible fascination from which you found it difficult 
to escape. 

A Paris such as none had ever dreamed of it was 
in those days. It was one big family, and if you 
were here then you couldn't have avoided the feel- 
ing that you were enjoying the rare privilege of 
being a favored guest, by special grace admitted 
into its domestic intimacy and cordially invited to 
share its "pot-au-feu." 

^^> j© So 

Can you wonder, then, that I was a bit afraid to 
see Paris again after all these months of absence 
and of war — afraid that I would not find the fas- 
cinating Paris that last I saw and positive that I 
could not find the Paris that I used to know— afraid 
that I should find still another Paris that I dreaded 



The Spirit op Italy 217 

to see, a Paris "triste," depressed, or perhaps fatal- 
istically resigned to the worst; a Paris sombre of 
aspect, gloomily garbed as to its women, its vehicles 
chiefly ambulances, its parks and parklets filled 
with mutilated men in weary convalescence? 

Unexpected business brought me here three days 
ago on a flying trip from sunny Italy. It was a 
tiresome all night ride from Milan. Four rigid 
examinations of person, passport and baggage — 
two on leaving Italy and two on entering France. 
Rigid, I say, but altogether justifiable and courte- 
ously conducted. The thermometer was 90 in the 
shade when I boarded the train in Milan. When I 
reached the square in front of the Lyons station 
here a cold chill ran through me. The sky was gray 
and threatening. The streets at this hour — 7.30 A. 
M. — were almost deserted. The air was raw and 
penetrating. It was far from pleasant, the feeling 
that took possession of me, and for the moment I 
wished myself back beyond the Alps. 

However, as I drove slowly along the Grand 
Boulevards in an open cab behind a very sad look- 
ing horse (indeed, no sadder than nearly all his 
fellows, for like the men it is only the unmobilizable 
horses that still remain in cab service), things 
seemed to grow a bit more cheery. Little by little 
many of the shops began to open and the visible 
number of working girls, trim and tidy and tasteful 
as ever in their simplicity, going to their daily occu- 
pations, increased. 

Paris and "la femme" ! There they were at once ! 



218 The Spirit of Italy 

There were few touches of color in these young 
women's modest toilettes, but the soberness of their 
blacks and grays was not depressing and their col- 
lective face was anything but the face of despair. 
And my cocher was a genial, garrulous old chap 
(with three sons in the war), who kept up a contin- 
ual chatter when he found that I had been absent 
so long, the burden of which was to assure me that 
things were going along "pas mal" — not badly — 
in Paris; that everybody realized that the war 
would last at least another year longer; that the 
Germans are "a tough lot to handle" ; that the Rus- 
sians were having a hard time of it, but would 
"show the Germans something they didn't expect 
when the right time arrived" and that the final 
triumph of the Allies was "just as sure as there is 
a sky over our heads." 

Thanks to the bright eyes of the little working 
girls, the intelligent and comprehensive summary 
of the situation by my cocher and the good, warm 
cafe au lait which he and I enjoyed at a little bar 
next to the Matin office, as we resumed our drive 
along the boulevard, past the corner of the rue 
Montmartre, by the Cafe Cardinal, decorated with 
its effigee of Richelieu, and on toward the Place de 
TOpera, I discovered that I had lost that ominous 
chill that greeted me at the Lyons station. My 
spirits were mounting. The old Paris feeling was 
insinuating itself. The mist of the morning was 
dissipating. The city was unveiling herself and 



The Spirit of Italy 219 

soon once more I felt myself looking straight into 
her dear face! 

"Maudlin rubbish/' did you say? 

For you, perhaps! Not, however, if ever you 
have really known Paris. So I have no apology to 
make. •' !, |yf|| 

In fact, I found little change in the Paris of to- 
day from the Paris of eleven months ago, except 
that the movement in the streets had perhaps 
trebled; that half as many more shops are open; 
that the eating places are permitted to do business 
an hour longer and that there are many more sol- 
diers to be seen on the public highways than when 
I left. 

A word about these soldiers. Most of them are 
men who have been granted four or five days repose 
from the trenches to see their families. A welcome 
addition to Paris life are they, furnishing as they 
do a gay and cheery note to the rather subdued 
stage setting. As might be expected, their field uni- 
forms were almost in rags when they got back, so 
while awaiting their new outfit of gray blue they 
have had to be provided with "any old uniform" 
that is handy. 

What is the result? The most bizarre effect. It 
is almost impossible to find two "leave men" simi- 
larly garbed. Every color of the rainbow, every 
imaginable design of uniform is to be seen on the 
streets. Some of the uniforms surely must belong 



220 The Spirit of Italy 

at least to the days of Louis Philippe. Beyond all 
doubt many of them saw service in the war of 1870. 
However, all this weird variety of uniforms is grate- 
ful to the eye of the invading observer. It may, in- 
deed, suggest a comic opera chorus to the trivial 
minded, but to the seeker after impressions these 
Joseph's coats lend a variety and color to the scene 
which offset the sobriety of the garments of the 
gentler sex. Amusing it seemed at first to one who 
had seen the Italian soldiers in gray green from 
Naples to the Alps. But after a day in Paris under 
skies quite other than Italian, these multicolored 
fantasies in military uniforms, with their blues and 
reds and browns and yellows and heaven knows 
what other color or tint, were a welcome and effec- 
tive note in the metropolitan picture. 

To sum up : Paris at the end of August, 1915, 
seems three times as animated as it was a year ago. 
General business is fairly active. The big depart- 
ment shops like the Galeries Lafayette, the Prin- 
temps and the Louvre are crowded with Parisian 
women shoppers. Food prices have advanced only 
in rare cases, the increase being principally on 
meat, which costs about 50 per cent, more, although, 
strange to say, there is a plentiful supply of cattle 
at the abattoir. While the American dressmaker 
contingent was here the Eue de la Paix opened up 
a bit for their benefit, but since they have gone it 
has resumed its wonted tranquility, while there is 



The Spirit of Italy 221 

no safer playground for children of tender age than 
in the shadow of the Colonne Vendome ! 

Paris is not sad ; it is only serious. 

The decision of the Government to grant four or 
five days leave of absence to the soldiers who have 
been in service for twelve months has proved to be 
most wise. These men have returned in many cases 
in better health than they had ever known in their 
lives before. I have met several whom I'd formerly 
known as palefaced, stoop shouldered clerks in 
Boulevard shops or bankers' counting rooms, who 
have gained ten, fifteen, twenty pounds. So changed 
in appearance were they that I hardly knew them ! 
Their presence in Paris has had a tonic effect on 
the women and stay-at-homes and many of them 
can hardly wait for their leave to expire in their 
eagerness to return to the front. 

From all I can learn from men who have been on 
the firing line, the morale of the French army never 
was higher than today. 

■^P >^P w^P 

Doubtless the cables have been telling about the 
recent political agitation in French Parliamentary 
circles. In cold type the news may look more seri- 
ous than it really is. Last night I spent an hour 
and a half with Gustave Herve, editor of La Guerre 
Sociale, who you may be sure is always to be found 
in the middle if there is a fight going on. Being a 
Celt, that is, a Breton, like his Irish cousins, his 
rule is : "If you see a head hit it !" 



222 The Spirit of Italy 

"What's all this about?" said I to him, as we were 
strolling across the Pont Neuf after midnight to his 
home on the Left Bank. "It looks as if some of you 
fellows were trying to smash up the Government. 
These Parliamentary rumpuses are making a bad 
impression in Italy, and doubtless in England, too." 

"Mon cher ami," replied the Socialist journalist, 
putting his hand on my shoulder, "don't let this 
Parliamentary racket worry you in the least. Re- 
member we Frenchmen do love to talk. Don't you 
know there are at least 1,000,000 orators in France? 
Don't you know that for nearly a year our political 
Demostheneses and Ciceros have been corked up 
until they are fairly ready to burst with their fer- 
menting eloquence? Don't be angry with us. Con- 
sider our Gallic temperament. Let us blow off our 
steam! I assure you there is absolutely noi real 
division among the people of France. All of this 
political discussion is simply a ripple on the sur- 
face." 

If anybody knows real conditions in France to- 
day it is Mr. Herve. And after my long talk with 
him I feel fully convinced that the spirit of the na- 
tion is more determined than ever to see this war 
fought to a finish. 

^9 i^p ^w 

Our new American Ambassador, Mr. Sharp, after 
looking at forty different houses that were offered 
to him, has at last secured an ideal home in the 
Avenue d'Eylau. Sunday afternoon I had the 



The Spirit of Italy 223 

pleasure of spending with him and his charming 
family, who already have made many friends among 
the French. Mr. Sharp made no mistake in the se- 
lection of his house. It belongs to a very wealthy 
Italian and is a model of elegance, simplicity and 
modern comfort. The proprietor is an art collector 
of some repute, and among the treasures that sur- 
round Mr. Sharp are a Guido Reni, a Van Dyke, a 
Sodoma, any number of Bouchers and a wonderful 
portrait of the English actor, Charles Kemble, by 
Lawrence. Behind the house is an ideal garden, 
where I am sure after the war Mrs. Sharp will be 
able to give many a fairyland party. I was beating 
about the bush with a reporter's curiosity to try to 
find out what rent our Ambassador would have to 
pay for this splendid establishment. He "got on 
to my curves," however, and smilingly said: 

"Now, that is none of your business. I am tired 
of hearing about the terrible rents that American 
Ambassadors have to pay for their residences in 
Europe and elsewhere. I don't hesitate to say that 
our Government, like other Governments, should 
own the Embassy buildings. However, I have made 
up my mind that nobody would ever know from me 
either the amount of my weekly grocery bills in 
Paris or the annual rent of the Ambassadorial resi- 
dence." 

Mr. Sharp, by the way, has just returned from an 
extended tour to the Austrian and German concen* 
tration camps in France. He personally inspected 
fifteen or twenty and seemed well satisfied with 



224 The Spirit of Italy 

everything he saw. Evidently the French are tak- 
ing very good care of their prisoners. It is to be 
hoped that these tens of thousands of Germans who 
are being nourished with French food, prepared by 
real French cooks, will learn a few lessons which 
they can apply in their own kitchens when they get 
back to the fatherland after the peace treaty is 
signed. 

I shouldn't omit speaking of Mr. Robert Woods 
Bliss, the Embassy's First Secretary, whom I 
found at his desk, where I left him the end of Sep- 
tember, last year. Although looking a bit thinner, 
he seemed to have stood the strain and stress of the 
twelve months remarkably well, while Mrs. Bliss' 
enthusiasm in her relief work, I understand, has 
known no abatement. 

t^f a/37 ^W^ 

I talked this morning with a New York woman 
who is an active and energetic volunteer nurse at 
the American Ambulance at Neuilly. Judging from 
what she told me that splendid institution is keep- 
ing its work up to the high standard which it es- 
tablished for itself in the beginning and continues 
to be the model ambulance of France. Nearly all 
the American men who have remained in Paris since 
the war began have been doing some sort of work 
in connection with the French sanitary service. 
Louis Hauser, New York architect and engineer, 
told me he had been driving a military automobile 
for six months. He and some of his American asso- 



The Spirit of Italy 225 

ciates have taken a few weeks' rest, during which 
time they recreate themselves playing baseball at 
Colombes, on the outskirts of Paris, much to the 
amusement of the convalescent French soldiers. My 
old newspaper-artist friend, Jack Casey, whom I 
saw leave for the front a year ago, was in town the 
other day. I missed him, but I am glad to say he is 
still safe and sound and a better shot than ever. 

Boyd Neel, the Anglo-American broker, is "do- 
ing business at the old stand," at the corner of the 
rues Daunon and Volney, but his American visitors 
are few and far between. 

I must not forget to add that I found George, the 
Parisian English cocher, hale, hearty and rubicund 
as ever. He nearly hugged me when he met me in 
front of the Cafe de la Paix. 

"Where is your horse and cab, George?" I asked. 

"Lord-a-mighty, sir! I haven't had a horse and 
cab for months. The last horse I had the Govern- 
ment took, I don't know whether for hauling pur- 
poses or for the abattoir. And you don't suppose 
a good Englishman like me would drive one of those 
poor 'skates' that you see On the streets nowadays. 
Never, sir, by all that's good and holy ! I am learn- 
ing to be a chauffeur and hope to get a taxi in a 
few weeks. But a taxi is not like a horse cab ; you 
can't talk to your passengers and you know talk is 
my long suit." 

■A& t^B ^5> 

Yesterday afternoon I went to bid bon voyage to 



226 The Spirit op Italy 

Mile. Therese Fayou, who is about to leave her Paris 
home for her New York home. When I reached her 
house in the old Eue de Verneuil, across the river, 
I found an unusual commotion in the usually peace- 
ful courtyard and the sounds of weeping from the 
apartment beneath that of Mile. Fayou's mother. 

I had arrived in a tragic moment. The only son 
of the widow below had, through his mother's in- 
fluence, been retained in service at the Ministry of 
War when all his chums had "gone to the front." 
The fact prayed upon his mind until he became 
neurasthenic. Just an hour before I had come the 
young man had blown out his brains and his un- 
fortunate mother was wailing, "If only I had let 
him go!" 

Mile. Fayou has two brothers fighting and one a 
prisoner in Germany. "Thank God, I let them go 
cheerfully when their country called them," said 
brave Mme. Fayou, Mile. Therese's little mother, to 
me. "If they die on the battlefield it will be death 
with honor. I shall know that I have done my duty 
to my dear France and that they have done theirs." 

And as Mme. Fayou feels, so feel ninety-nine per 
cent, of the mothers of this great nation. 



L 



The Spirit of Italy 227 



XXVI. 

Mussolini, Milan's Brilliant and Fearless Socialist 
Editor, Off to the Front — A Farewell Inter- 
view in Which He Predicts the Benefits to 
Democracy Which the War Must Ensure. 

Milan, Tuesday, August 31, 1915. 

AST night I bade Mussolini goodby — Ben- 
ito Mussolini, of whom I have already 
told you, the leading Socialist editor of 
Italy, the Gustave Herve of this country. 
Mussolini has been called to the colors 
and this morning will join his regiment 
of bersaglieri. 

I found him hard at work up to the last hours in 
his little room in the unpretentious offices of the 
paper founded by him a year ago, the Popolo 
d } Italia. He looked bright and happy, as though 
a load had been lifted from his mind and heart, for 
although he had offered his services as a volunteer 
many months ago, they were refused; he was told 
that Italy then had all the men "militarized" that 
she needed ; that he must wait until his class of the 
men born in 1884 was called and that in the mean- 
time he could feel that he would be more use to his 
country at the editor's desk than in the trenches. 

However, although he is about to start off with a 
gun and bayonet as his "tools of trade" I suspect 



228 The Spirit of Italy 

that lie will carry a fountain pen in his pocket and 
that from time to time his stirring and patriotic 
editorials will help to maintain the character with 
which his personality has endowed his newspaper. 

^s^ ^^r ^P^ 

I have seen and conversed with Mussolini enough 
to have my first impression of his fine mentality and 
his ideas fully confirmed. He is an honor to his 
country and to his profession. Men like Mussolini 
help give the cachet of a profession to journalism. 
A year ago he was editor of the older Socialist paper 
of Milan, the Avanti, which in Italian means the 
Forward, the Vorwaerts. But unlike so many other 
Socialists — the so-called "centre" of the party — he 
was at once for intervention. He was too ardent 
a soul to be a "neutralist" and he loved liberty too 
dearly — for he comes from Forli, in Romagna, a 
province of Italy which has been strongly repub- 
lican in sympathy since the days of the French 
Revolution — to see any other course for Italy to 
pursue than to take sides with France and her 
Allies. The Teutonic formula was abhorrent to his 
spirit. 

However, the dominant element in, the office of 
the Avanti refused to be converted by Mussolini and 
although he was making a fairly good living as an 
editor, he put on his coat and walked out of the edi- 
torial room with only one week's salary in his 
pocket. With him went half a dozen other bright 
young newspapermen. "Start a paper of your own," 
said they, "and we'll stick by you." 



The Spirit of Italy 229 

It's not such an easy thing to start a newspaper 
in a big town like Milan. Did you ever try it? I 
did with some other reporter friends a good many 
years ago in Baltimore. It lasted three months — 
until that famous blizzard came along and put us 
out of business! Well, Mussolini has had better 
luck. And he deserved it. We thought we were 
"filling a long felt want" in providing Baltimore 
with another newspaper. We were mistaken. Mus- 
solini was not. The "want" for such a paper as his 
existed and the Popolo d y Italia, proved a success 
from the start until now it has a circulation of 
100,000. And quite proud is the genial Scotchman, 
Muir, whom I met at Como, who greatly admires 
Mussolini, that he should have been among the very 
first to give the Popolo rFItalia a substantial "ad" 
of the big English concern which he represents, the 
appearance of which in Mussolini's paper helped 
bring him scores of other advertising contracts. 

"Well," said Mussolini to me after I wished him 
the best of fortune on the firing line and a long life 
of usefulness after the war, "as you are soon to re- 
turn to your land of liberty, I hope you will let 
your American friends know exactly how we are 
conducting ourselves over here. Let them know 
that this is not a war of conquest, but a war for the 
defence of human rights. Let them know that, 
apart from a miserable handful of so-called Social- 
ists, enemies in the household, worse than Aus- 



230 The Spirit of Italy 

trians, Germans or Turks, Italy is one mind and 
heart from the Alps to Sicily. Let them know that 
this war will never end till the Hohenzollerns and 
the Hapsburgs are brought to their knees. That's 
how we feel. Put it in plain words !" 

As I had just returned from a week's visit to 
Paris and had brought Mussolini a special message 
from Gustave Herve, he was intensely interested 
in learning what I had seen and heard in the French 
capital. As he and Herve had never met and only 
knew each other through the exchange of the Popolo 
d'ltalia and the Guerre Sociale, he wanted especial- 
ly to know what Herve thought, just as I had found 
Herve eager to know Mussolini's opinion. I did 
my best as a sort of "wireless" communicator be- 
tween these two interesting personalities, but it 
would be quite improper for a "common carrier" to 
disclose the confidential communications entrusted 
to it for transmission. Which fact compels me to 
omit several very interesting paragraphs from this 
letter rather than run afoul of that best of censors 
— Good Taste. 

The declaration of war against Turkey had oc- 
curred during my brief absence from Italy. It cre- 
ated no surprise or excitement here. In fact, Mus- 
solini had not a little to do with the preparation of 
the minds of the masses for the event. 

"It was the only logical thing," was his comment. 
"It is only another proof of our unshakable purpose 
to go to the bitter end. Note, too, that Italy de- 
clared war against Austria in one of the darkest 



The Spirit of Italy 231 

moments of the conflict as respects the Allies — the 
beginning of the Russian retreat. We have followed 
this up by declaring war on Turkey when things 
looked even worse* for Russia. What an example 
we have shown the Balkan States? Will they profit 
by it? That's the question. We can only wait and 
hope." 

Mussolini has taken great interest in the argu- 
ments advanced by the "Old Tiger" of French poli- 
tics and journalism, Clemenceau, and French ex- 
Minister of War Pinchon in favor of bringing 
Japanese troops to Europe. 

"I am absolutely opposed to the idea," said Mus- 
solini. "It would be an act of supreme unwisdom. 
This is a European war. We had best keep it so. 
Besides even if there had been any need to bring 
Japanese from the East that need was at once dis- 
sipated when Italy took up arms. To continue to 
talk about Japanese intervention in Europe now is 
an insult to us Italians ! They are not? necessary. 
The European Allies have plenty of men and it is 
for; them to inflict the deserved punishment upon 
Germany, who must be compelled by Europeans to 
realize that her dream of world overlordship is a 
mad folly. It never must be said that Europe had 
to call on Asia to administer the castigation which 
Germany is sure to receive. No ; this is our war — 
our European war — and ours it should remain to 
the end." 



232 The Spirit of Italy 

Mussolini added, with a smile, that he imagined 
not a few American sympathizers with the Allies 
entertained similar views. And I had to admit 
that, although I am not a Japanophobist, he had 
judged rightly. Certainly Mr. Hobson will agree 
with him, and perhaps Mr. Roosevelt also. How- 
ever, a credible Italian correspondent, Signor Pi- 
sani, who was with the Russians when they evacu- 
ated Warsaw, writes to the Resto del Carlino of 
Bologna that he saw Japanese guns with the Rus- 
sian army being served by Japanese artillerymen. 
To the technical assistance on the part of the "little 
yellow men" Mussolini made no objection, nor to 
the decision just announced of the Japanese Gov- 
ernment to furnish all the arms and ammunition 
possible to the Allies, "as," he added, "the manu- 
facturers of the United States are doing individu- 
ally." 

Needless to say, Mussolini is an optimist. He 
considers the war a devouring flame, but a purify- 
ing fire as well. 

"It all makes for a greater democracy," said he, 
"and it accentuates and makes evident the value of 
true nationality. It will teach every nation how to 
'keep its own house' while maintaining cordial so- 
cial relations with every other nation that recog- 
nizes the lofty ideals of the Anglo-Saxon-Latin civil- 
ization. See what it is doing for Italy already. We 



The Spirit of Italy 233 

have organized one great army to fight with bayonet 
and cannon. But, sir, we are organizing a much 
greater army whose work will continue long after 
the army of warriors has been dissolved. I speak 
of our industrial army. Think of what it is learn- 
ing — learning to do things that for decades, yes, 
for centuries — for even Machiavelli spoke of the 

German industrial and commercial invaders in his 
day — our enemies from beyond the Alps tried to 
make us believe we couldn't do without their ad- 
vice and assistance. 

"Look at Russia, too. She is going through the 
same experiences. Her retreat is due to her bribed 
courtiers and corrupt bureaucracy — sold body and 
soul to Germany. Thank heaven, scores of these 
traitors have paid the penalty for their treachery 
on the gallows. But the "Russian masses are awak- 
ening. The democracy of that nation has been con- 
scious. The Czar must take it into his counsel. 
The present reverses that Russia is undergoing will 
be Russia's salvation. They are making a new Rus- 
sia, and that Russia will be invincible." 

Mussolini's face was flushed. His coal black 
eyes were all aglow. He spoke with an intensity 
born of conviction. What a Methodist preacher he 
would have made had he been born in America in- 
stead of Romagna ! 

"Goodby!" said he at last. "Perhaps we may 
never meet again. But let us hope we shall. All 
T ask is that you do what you can to make Ameri- 
cans understand Italy better. And tell them the 



234 The Spirit of Italy 

hour of triumphant democracy is close at hand! 
Addio caro collega e amico! Evviva V Italia! 
Evviva V America del Nord!" 



The Spibit of Italy 235 



XXVII. 

Back Again to Paris on the Anniversary of the Bat- 
tle of the Marne — Reawakened Memories of a 
Year Ago — How Gustave Herve Explains the 
"Miracle" — War a Blessing to Russia — The 
Rabbi of Lyons. 

Paris, Monday, September 6, 1915. 

TRANGE chance that brings me back 
from Italy for a forty-eight hour visit 
to Paris on this day of all others — the 
anniversary of the commencement of the 
battle of the Marne — this day that saved 
Paris and permits Gen. Joffre (who, we 
learned only last night, has been visiting the Italian 
front and has been decorated by the King of Italy) 
to declare that he is "confident more than ever of 
the final victory." 

The weather is almost identical with that other 
6th of September (which was a Sunday) — skies 
clear, sunshine bright but quietly suggestive of the 
approaching autumn. Little did we then within the 
great city know of the organization, perhaps I 
should say, "improvization," of the "Army of Par- 
is," and what a tremendous move was being made 
a few miles north of us by gallant Gen. Maunoury, 
whose recovery of his sight is the prayer of every 
man and woman who admires true heroism — 




236 The Spirit of Italy 

Maunoury who, when the attack on the left wing 
of von Kluck was decided, in turn headed each regi- 
ment of the Sixth Army himself, and yesterday in 
recalling the 9th of September, when he saw the 
Germans at last in full retreat declared : "I didn*t 
care what happened to me after that !" 

^F^ ^^r ^^r 

No; we in Paris a year ago — this afternoon I 
talked it all over again in his sumptuous editorial 
office at the Gaulois building with that "dernier Pa- 
risien" of whose fascinating personality I have on 
another occasion tried to give Americans an impres- 
sion, Monsieur Arthur Meyer — we in Paris knew 
nothing about the history that was in making with- 
in a short taxi ride. We only knew that the 
normal population of Paris was minus a million, 
that the morning had been devoted by the "faith- 
ful" to a Ste. Genevieve procession and that in the 
afternoon in the "quarters" like the much maligned 
and sometimes dreaded Belleville, whither I had 
wandered, the sons and daughters of the men and 
women who in 1870 formed the body of the san- 
guinary "Commune" were peacefully enjoying their 
coffee or beer and syrup-and-siphon in the early 
September sunshine apparently undisturbed by the 
present and fearless of the future. 

Truly astonishing the spirit of these people on 
that day a year ago appears to me as I look back. 
Communicative, too, was it; for I felt it took pos- 
session of me and I was continually saying to my- 



The Spirit of Italy 237 

self just what this mass of fellow beings was think- 
ing : "They won't get to Paris ! They won't get to 
Paris!" (Interesting data for the student of the 
psychology of crowds). Well, they didn't; and if 
they didn't then they never will, if what I hear of 
the condition of the French and English wall of 
men and guns from the North Sea to the Swiss 
frontier is even approximately true. 

"General Joffre's sentiment," said Monsieur Mey- 
er to me, "is the sentiment of every man, woman 
and child of our nation." 

I've told you this before. But I feel justified in 
my reiteration, especially just now when the cables 
tell us of Bernstorff's "peace terms" announced in 
Washington. I see by the newspapers what the 
English think of this latest Fliegende Blaetter 
"joke" from the German Diplomacy Factory — an- 
other Teutonic product "not made by Krupp" — and 
I know personally how utterly ridiculous these 
"peace terms" are considered by French, Italians 
and Russians, so ridiculous as not to be regarded as 
worth discussing. They only give occasion for em- 
phasis of the fact that on September 4, a year and 
two days ago, the "Holy Alliance of the Twentieth 
Century" was signed by England, France and Rus- 
sia and that since then Italy is believed to have 
added her pledge to that compact that no separate 
peace proposal should be entertained. 

That "Holy Alliance" is adamant. Of this no 



238 The Spirit op Italy 

American should have any doubt. No one is talk- 
ing of peace today in Europe except Germany, es- 
pecially since the latest marine atrocity, the sink- 
ing of the Hesperian. 

^ r 35r 3©" 

I have spoken of Eussia. I haven't been in Rus- 
sia, it is true, but circumstances have put me in 
contact with many Russians of intelligence and 
largeness of view during the past three months. At 
my hotel in Como, Italy, there is the family of a 
Russian Baron who, himself has been transferring 
all his movable property from the neighborhood of 
Riga to Petrograd. Very liberal minded people are 
the Baroness (herself, by the way, an Italian) and 
the eldest daughter of 20 years, who speaks six 
languages and has been taking a special university 
course in Philology. (Barnard College should get 
this young woman on its staff.) In Switzerland, 
too, I have talked with many Russians, and coming 
on the train with me from Milan was another Rus- 
sian gentleman whose handsome wife is a native of 
Irkutsk, Siberia. These facts I mention to show 
that I have the "documentation." 

And what of it? Simply this: that these hours 
which seem terrible for Russia, as did the retreat 
from Belgium a year ago for the French, are the 
darkness which preceded the dawn and day of Rus- 
sia's salvation from the enemy and from herself! 

"Thank God!" said to me one Russian (it 
wouldn't be fair to use his name). "Thank God! 



The Spirit of Italy 239 

Now our people soon will awake ! In fact, they 
are awakening. They are realizing that we cannot 
win under the old corrupt and corrupted regime. 
The bureaucracy must go ! The Russian democracy 
— and it is a magnificent democracy, my dear sir, 
if you only kneAV it ! — is going to come into its own ! 
Moscow, not Petrograd, is the heart of the nation. 
Moscow has let Petrograd have its own way too 
long. 

"But there's an end to that. Moscow has spoken, 
and when Moscow speaks it is the voice of the real 
Russia. If you would know how Moscow feels all I 
need tell you is that while, for example, the city of 
Milan, richest of Italy, raised by popular subscrip- 
tion for the war charities f 1,250,000, Moscow raised 
—don't be surprised !—f 75,000,000 ! Make a note 
of it— f 75,000,000 ! That's the way we Russians do 
things. Sounds like America, doesn't it? And we 
shall be a counterpart of the United States in time 
We shall make a new 'West' of our 'East' — our Si- 
beria, which is in about the same condition today as 
your 'West' was fifty years ago. 

^^7 ^^T m& 

"But all this requires liberty and democracy, and 
the retreat of our army today is only the symbol of 
the retreat and defeat of the system of Government 
that is responsible for it and all the other errors of 
the past. The Duma is sure to have its proper place 
in the government of the nation, and the gallows is 
hungry for many more skulking traitors both in the 
bureaucracy and in the army. Our Czar will have 



'■*f ! ; , I j; , 



240 The Spibit of Italy 

to take a lesson from the King of Italy and listen to 
the voice of the people demanding their rights. The 
democracy of Russia will save Russia from the in- 
vader as the armies of the French Republic saved 
France after the Revolution. In fact, Russia is on 
the verge of revolution — perhaps in revolution — 
but it is a revolution whose victims will only be the 
bureaucratic and German-bought traitors to their 
country and the invading forces of the barbarians 
of Central Europe. 

"The appointment of Goutchkov as head of the 
New Committee on Munitions in the Ministry of 
War and the organization of that committee is a 
historic event, one of the most important steps 
imaginable toward Russian self-government. The 
debate in the Duma over the subject was a wonder- 
ful revelation of the true spirit of Russia. The 
social Democrat, Tchkenheli, declared that to de- 
fend the old regime was equivalent to treason. Mak- 
lahov, brother of the former Minister of the In- 
terior, said that too many appointments to high 
official positions since the beginning of the war 
had been due to complicity and favoritism, many 
of them being a public scandal and the defiance of 
public opinion: adding that the new Government, 
whose task it is to conquer the Germans, may find 
it even more difficult to overcome the resistance of 
its subordinates. The time has arrived, said Mr. 
Maklahov, for. a thorough housecleaning ; the coun- 
trv has made too manv sacrifices not to demand it ; 
an end should be put to this state of things and the 



The Spirit of Italy 241 

right man should be put in the right place. This 
sentiment was applauded by the entire Duma, 
which knew that Mr. Maklahov was simply voicing 
what every Russian had known all along. Goutch- 
kov is the right man in the right place, but we want 
a good many more like him and we are going to 
have them if the Czar possesses the wisdom with 
which we credit him." 

^^ ^& ^w 

All this may be an old story in America* but I 
am recounting it to you because I get it from a 
thoroughly reliable man who is fresh from Moscow 
and who knows what he is talking about. And I 
can't help adding as I make a retrospect of these 
many months of international carnage, that this 
war ultimately will prove a godsend to every na- 
tion involved, but especially to the two nations that 
most needed waking up — Russia and Great Britain. 

So much has been written about Paris since I 
left it last October that there is little left of "actu- 
ality" to tell you. Verily the war here seems to have 
lost all its terrors. It is become the almost univer- 
sal "business." Every one accepts it as the only 
real "business" of the hour in spite of the real 
peril to which millions of Frenchmen and others 
are exposed. But in normal times there is always 
a small percentage of men whose businesses 



242 The Spieit of Italy 

involve taking their lives in their hands — steeple- 
jacks, deep sea divers, workers in explosive facto- 
ries, locomotive engineers, etc. ; you may add to the 
list vourself. The onlv difference here todav is that 
the percentage of able bodied men who are engaged 
in perilous enterprises is immeasurably increased, 
while the percentage occupied in innocuous employ- 
ments, on the other hand, is reduced to a negligible 
quantity. 



Reverting to the anniversary of the Battle of the 
Marne (which should be the only excuse for this 
letter) and recalling the fact that many good people 
in Paris regarded the defeat of von Kluck as a 
"miracle/' let me quote my Socialist friend, the 
"ex-internationalist" editor of the Guerre Sociale, 
Comrade Gustave Herve. Here is how he puts it. 

"Miracle? No! 

"It was natural that Joan of Arc and all the 
heroes of old France should come out of their tombs 
at that solemn hour. 

"It was natural that those of Valmy and those of 
Champaubert and of Montmirail and the glorious 
defeated of Sedan and Gravelotte should rise from 
their native soil to encourage their sons, because 
their sens were worthy of them. 

"The saints of the Church of France rushed for- 
ward and also the Great Unbelievers whom the 
Church of France had burned throughout the cen- 
turies or whose sublime audacities it had proscribed 



The Spirit of Italy 243 

"Even the very wine of France itself aided by 
intoxicating the barbarians who had violated its 
sacred cellars in Champagne. 

"Poor France! What wretchedness! Poor ex- 
hausted nation ! Rotten to the core ! Without or- 
der! Without discipline! Utterly demoralized! 

"Schools without God! Republic incapable of 
having an army or a diplomacy ! 

"And yet behold ! At the sound of the cannon the 
dead spring to life ! 

"There you have it — the miracle of the Marne!" 

"That's the stuff !' said J. Some of these short 
sighted French politicians from time to time try to 
"put the screws" on Herve, but they can't break 
his spirit. For no man who writes in France today 
is a truer patriot than he and Herve's burning edi- 
torials in the Guerre Sociale are, in my humble 
opinion, France's finest literary product of the war. 

Just an incident to close this letter — an incident 
that will touch the heart of any man who believes in 
that Communion of Saints whom the stamp of no 
creed can disfigure : 

A few days ago a religious service was held in 
the Jewish Temple at Lyons on the anniversary of 
the death of the Chief Rabbi of Lyons, the Rev. 
Abraham Bloch, a chaplain of the 14th Army Corps, 
"killed gloriously" at Tintu in the Vosges, August 
29, 1914. It was a very impressive service, I am 



244 The Spibit op Italy 

told, and every creed and no-creed was represented, 
as deserved the memory of this heroic descendant 
of Joshua and Judas Maccabeus. 

A wounded soldier was dying. Rabbi Bloch 
rushed forward to take him from an ambulance 
which the Germans were bombarding. The dying 
man looked up into the rabbi's sympathetic face. 
He thought he was a Catholic priest. 

"A crucifix! a crucifix!" the poor fellow mur- 
mured. 

Immediately the rabbi found a crucifix, brought 
it to the dying man and had just placed it in his 
feeble hands when a shell burst overhead and a 
fragment killed the rabbi instantly. 

Don't tell me that the placing of that crucifix in 
that dying soldier's hand was not an act of absolu- 
tion effective in the sight of the Christian God, as 
any absolution ever granted by an anointed priest 
of the Roman Church ! 



The Spirit of Italy 245 



XXVIII. 

Farewell to Wartime Italy — Last Hours in Naples 
— A Talk with a Senatorial Philosopher — Gio- 
litti's Intrigues so Far Unsuccessful — Italy's 
Masses Loyal and Confident. 

On Board the Taormina, Sunday,, Sept. 12, 1915. 

ES, it was the same little ragged urchin. 
Af And he was doing the same old rag-a- 

muflin "flipflops," greedily snatching 
the same two-soldi coppers that we 
tossed him during the entr'actes of his 
performance. 
The same little ragged "flip-flopper," it is true; 
but there was only one of him when our steamship 
sidled up to the dock yesterday morning after a pas- 
sage from Genoa. How lonely he looked and how 
changed the stage setting of his simple vaudeville 
"turn" ! Subdued that wonted radiant smile of "la 
bella Napoli" ; absent the "flip-flopper' s" scores of 
companions and rival acrobats; absent the deafen- 
ing vociferations of the wonted crowd that in other 
times flooded the wharves and with its noise and 
movement to the good natured stranger would sug- 
gest nothing short of Bedlam, and to the cynical 
a foretaste of Hell. 

Vesuvius is veiled in a forenoon mist. Shadows 
soften the outlines of that earthly paradise, so dear 



246 The Spirit of Italy 

to Marion Crawford, the Sorrentine peninsula. A 
gray sky that threatens showers looks down on the 
city from the Palace of Capodimonte to Santa 
Lucia, from Posillipo to the Basso Porto. A theatre 
stage manager would say that the stage electrician 
had neglected his duties. The scene surely was not 
"set" for a Metropolitan performance. It was what 
might be expected at a presentation at the one-night 
stand of Painted Post by a fly-by-night road com- 
pany of that unique and perennially interesting 
drama, "La Commedia Umana di Napoli." 

Such was my first impression of the last eight 
hours of the eventful war week spent in Italy. Pour 
days after King Vittorio Emanuele signed the de- 
cree in response to the Vesuvian outburst of his 
people in favor of "intervention" I spent half a day 
in the city of Salvator Kosa and Bellini. Then it 
was full of soldiers and the population seemed 
greater than ever. Yesterday as I drove along the 
Corso Umberto, past the university and Bourse, 
through the Via Depretis by the statute of Vittorio 
Emanuele II, and dismounted at the Galleria I 
could note the change that had taken place. Lower 
Naples (much as I love the city, I must admit it) 
is never too clean — but neither are some of our 
American waterfront streets. Visits made two and 
six years ago, however, revealed to me a Naples 
commendably tidy in the other parts of the city. 
Yesterday, however, I noticed a decided air of do- 



The Spirit of Italy 247 

mestic carelessness. But when I mentioned the 
matter to Senator Giuseppe De Lorenzo (youngest 
Senator in Italy, by the way, after Marconi, pro- 
fessor of physical geography in the University of 
Naples and distinguished authority on Buddhistic 
philosophy), whom I had the good fortune to meet 
with a friend on landing, he said : 

"Your criticisms unfortunately are true; but re- 
member over 100,000 men have left Naples for the 
front and labor is hard to find. You will notice, 
however, that among those of the working classes 
who are left there is very little idleness in our city." 

In fact, on reading the local papers I found that 
the Mayor, the Duca del Pezzo, apologized to the 
City Council because he could not find sufficient la- 
borers to complete the repaving of the Corso Um- 
berto more expeditiously. But why should a New 
Yorker complain about such a trifle? Heaven knows 
we should be hardened to such inconveniences and 
wondrous kind in our judgment of Naples in these 
hours. 



I said that the arrival of our steamship was sig- 
nalled by none of the customary Neapolitan commo- 
tion. The day previous, however, had witnessed one 
of those scenes which have been reported dozens of 
times since war began: the landing of nearly a 
thousand "richiamati," as the men called to the 
colors are termed, from the United States. Then 
the piers really were filled with friends and rela- 



248 The Spirit of Italy 

tives and friends of friends and relatives to the 
number of 10,000 and over cheering and waving 
flags, while military bands played the stirring Gari- 
baldi and Mameli hymns. These "richiamati" don't 
tarry long in Naples. Every fellow gets his rail- 
road ticket immediately and is hurried off in short 
order to the military depot of "his country." In- 
spiring are these occasions, each one of which gives 
a new impetus to Neapolitan patriotism. 

"And think what all this means," said Senator 
de Lorenzo, the philosopher, to me, "think what 
ideas these thousands are bringing back to our dear 
old Italy from your new country, so big in terri- 
tory, so big in enterprise, so big in its love of liberty, 
so big in heart and — yes, it is equally true — so big 
in Ideality, which its youth, enthusiasm and re- 
sources are enabling it to incarnate in Reality. The 
regeneration of southern Italy, I'm sure, will owe 
much to the influence of the spirit acquired by the 
Italian immigrant in your country. It will go a 
long way toward solving the problem." 

■^y 3^> 30 

Fortunate, I said, it was to meet Seantor de Lo- 
renzo. Now 45 years of age, nevertheless, you felt 
in conversing with him you were talking with a 
Latin sage, so 3imple is he in manner, so modest, so 
expansive in his mental horizon,; so human in his 
sympathies. 

I count it a happy coincidence that he should 
have been the last man of whom I took leave in de- 



The Spirit of Italy 249 

parting from Italy on this occasion. Though born 
in a village within a short distance of Naples, there 
is nothing provincial in his mentality. In fact, this 
man forcefully represented to me the new Italy — 
the Italy of tomorrow, with its fine Latin culture 
(O word! What crimes have been committed in 
behalf of thy deformation ! ) , its sense of proportion 
and of beauty, its respect for individualism, its 
sane view of life, its pride in its past and faith in 
the future. 

And to think of it — it was a Japanese fellow pas- 
senger, Prof. Hedezo Simotomai, an eminent author- 
ity on earthquakes, who presented me to and helped 
me gain the friendship of this most interesting son 
of Parthenope ! 

Needless to tell you what Senator de Lorenzo 
thinks of the war. I shall simply say that like 
every other intelligent Italian with whom I have 
talked during these war weeks and months, he sees 
no end until the Quadriplice is triumphant, regard- 
ing the recovery of Trent and Trieste as mere inci- 
dents and the crushing of the Prussian overlord 
spirit as the only thing that will secure a durable 
peace in Europe and the unretarded progress of 
civilization. 

Thanks to the Senator, we half dozen Americans 
on board the Taormina had our first news of Presi- 
dent Wilson's demand for the recall of the Austro- 
Hungarian Ambassador Dumba. It was with a 
twinkle in his eye that he bowed and said : 

"Congratulations !" 



250 The Spirit of Italy 

No use denying it, the American contingent, 
which included two Washington women who had 
made a trip around the world since the big war 
began, heaved a great sigh of relief. For during my 
stay in Italy and my two trips through Switzer- 
land to France and back I have met representatives 
of a dozen different European nations, including 
German and Austrians (no Turks), and it seems 
to me that we have been the laughing stock of the 
people of the Central Empires, while the Allies and 
their sympathizers have been utterly unable to un- 
derstand our government's unprecedented policy of 
masterful inactivity and ultra Job-like patience. At 
last something has happened. We have no wireless 
communication here in the Mediterranean and we 
are all wondering what is the sequel. 

Matilda Serao, the most popular woman novelist 
of Italy, was a personage; I had hoped to have a 
word with yesterday. Signora Serao is the founder 
and editor in chief of a Naples afternoon paper, the 
Giorno. Before Italy declared war she came very 
near losing her prestige by her neutralists tend- 
encies. In fact, her colleagues of the press and 
others were saying things about her that were not at 
all nice. However, when war was decided upon 
Signora Serao fell in line, as did Editor Scarfoglio, 
of the Mattino, the leading morning paper, which 
also had been strangely unsympathetic with the 
idea of intervention. I wanted to know the reasons 



The Spirit of Italy 251 

of Signora Serao's conversion from her own mouth, 
but unfortunately she was absent from the city and 
her associates on the Giomo were discreetly uncom- 
municative. It is worth noting, however, that the 
leading article in her paper yesterday afternoon was 
a glowing tribute to "Russia in Resurrection," the 
"Awakening of the Giant," suggested by the auda- 
cious move of the Czar in taking the head of the 
army himself and the renewed and successful work 
of thfc Muscovites in Galicia. 

"Tolstoi's dream," said the Giomo, "is about to 
be realized. War has given to the giant infant, to 
the Colossus with the primitive soul, a conscious- 
ness of what the present means. Death has passed 
too near ! But from Death is born Life." 

Interesting this, because it is exactly the point of 
view of the Russian gentleman with whom I talked 
on the train during my last trip to Paris. 

The centre of gayest Naples, as all visitors to the 
city know, is the cafe on the Piazza Ferdinando, op- 
posite the Royal Palace and the famous San Carlo 
Opera House, which used to be adorned with a big 
sign bearing the word : "Gambrinus." War quick- 
ly changed that. Now it is simply the "Esposito." 
Here gather the Neapolitans of the dolce far niente 
class — quite numerous — in the afternoon and eve- 
ning. Here gather the town gossips, who discuss 
everything from the freshest social scandal to the 
latest plans of the Cabinet and the politicians on 
to the strategy of Gen. Cadorna. 



252 The Spirit of Italy 

At the Esposito it was that I heard discussed the 
rumors that Giolitti's fine Piemontese hand was try- 
ing to make itself felt again in political circles. 
What success Giolitti's reported machinations will 
have remains to be seen. So far, however, they have 
had small result. His instruments are the members 
of the Chamber of Deputies, elected through his 
nomination, but whose servility just prior to the 
war has discredited them before the people. They 
fear a new election and are trying hard to "mend 
their fences." 

The press, however — that is, the press untainted 
by Giolittism, which means 90 per cent, of the Ital- 
ian newspapers — has its eye on them, forewarning 
and forearming the patriotic masses. Politics is 
politics the world over, and just as Somebody (who 
shall be nameless) doubtless would like to see Presi- 
dent Wilson's policy a failure, so it is commonly 
believed that there is another Somebody in Italy 
whose patriotism is so affected by his "exile" in Ber- 
lin some years ago, that he would not shed many 
tears if the army of his country should suffer — a 
temporary reverse. 

However, if the Giolitti-ites look for an early re- 
turn to power, in the opinion of the well-informed 
Italians with whom I have talked, their hopes are 
not likely to be realized. Salandra's Government 
seems solid as a rock. The military position is said, 
on good authority, to be all that could be desired. 
Every possible preparation is being made for the 
winter campaign. At the proper time Italian 



The Spirit of Italy 253 

troops will join the English and French in connec- 
tion with the Dardanelles enterprise. Gen Ca- 
dorna has the absolute confidence of the nation, and 
the surprise visit of Gen. Joffre to the Italian front 
has made a most excellent impression on the public 
mind. Cadorna says he will have 4,000,000 men 
in the field in the spring. He can have another mil- 
lion if he wants them. Signor de Strens, the Italian 
representative of the Babcock- Wilcox Boiler Com- 
pany, who is an important member of the Civilian 
Munition Committee in Milan, told me before leav- 
ing that the organization is "working like a clock" 
and that there is no possibility of a shortage of ar- 
tillery supplies, while as for food, Italy has plenty 
and no soldier's family goes hungry. And every 
woman in Italy is busy knitting woolen socks — re- 
member, 18,000,000 pairs were called for — woolen 
caps and woolen "sweaters" for the "boys who are 
fighting in the mountains !" 

No idle hands; no idle brains today in Italy! 
Many hands, many brains — but really only one 
soul! 

And now as I close this letter we have passed the 
mined area in the lovely bay with which the 
thought of war and preparations for war seem so 
illy associated. Our lights are all down, our life 
preservers and lifeboats ready, for we are heading 
for the sinister shores of suspected Spain. Assured 



254 The Spirit of Italy 

are we by the thought that on the bridge stands a 
fine old Genovese "sea dog" — un bravo uomo— - 
named Capitano Frederico Mombello. The last sug- 
gestion of Posillipo's outline has faded away. Some- 
thing to the south of the inky waters we know is 
Capri — Capri with its amber wine and azure grotto. 
A thing of the past, my war days in "Italia diletta" 
— days not soon to be forgotten, that helped me 
better understand the spirit of this wonderful 
people, now writing with the pen of patriotism the 
fourth and greatest chapter of its national history. 
And if I have helped others in America feel what 
I have felt, see what I have seen, hear what I have 
heard — if I have made you, reader, just a little bit 
ashamed of yourself for having called your vege- 
table vendor a "dago" by reminding you that he is 
a son of the same soil that produced a Dante and a 
Da Vinci; or your bootblack a "macaroni" when 
you should know that his country possesses a 
kitchen which puts to shame our American kitchen 
(that of the Eastern shore of Maryland excepted) 
— if I have made you feel that the organ grinder in 
the street may be a great musician in embryo, for he 
comes of the same stock as the tavern keeper's son, 
Verdi — if I have forced home the conviction that 
the men who followed Garibaldi iri Italy's earlier 
wars of unification have worthy descendants in the 
brave, intelligent and patriotic soldiers who today 
proudly acknowledge Cadorna as their chief, and 
that they surely are something more than lazy 
"mandolin players" — why, then, my war-time let- 



The Spirit of Italy 255 

ters from Italy, which The Evening Sun has seen 
fit to print, may not have proved wholly valueless. 



256 The Spirit of Italy 



XXIX. 

"A Back Number" — Curious "Actuality" of an Old 
Copy of the "Revue d'ltalie" — How Certain 
Ideas Conceived Eighteen Months Ago Have 
Been Realized in Action Through "War. 

On Board the Taormina, September 23, 1915. 

MAGINE yourself at sea twelve days in 

I these palpitating times, with only a 

single scrap of news from the troubled 
outer world — and that most tenuously 
indefinite. 

You have read and reread all the old 
newspapers you brought with you from Italy, even 
to the patent medicine "ads" and the cattle market 
report. You have disposed of all the books in the 
ship's miniature library that appealed to your ap- 
petite or that you thought would justify the waste 
of time involved in skimming over their pages. By 
chance you excavate from the obscure recess of a 
rubbish laden shelf a "Back Number" of the Revue 
d'ltalie, dated April 1, 1914. A glance at its table 
of contents and — presto ! — your interest is sudden- 
ly revived. 

That is to say, I'm sure such would have been 
your feelings had you been following events in Italy 
for three months or more at close range; for here 
was a "Back Number" (it deserves to be capital- 




The Spirit of Itaia 257 

ized) whose age of nearly a year and a half had in- 
creased its value and invested it with even more 
"actuality'' than it possessed when first it was is- 
sued from the press in Eome. 

A year and a half ago came the fall of the long- 
lived Giolitti Ministry in Italy, and here you find 
in the Revue an article (which the editor explains 
was written before the change of Government) in 
which the future of the Radical party of the coun- 
try is discussed. The writer, Deputy Giuseppe 
Girardini, was sure that a "revolutionary situation 
was in formation" — "a situation for the moment 
without issue." 

Parliamentary authority, he feared, was in dan- 
ger. Socialism was becoming more and more men- 
acing, its leaders declaring it to be their purpose 
uncompromisingly to combat any and all bourgeois 
Ministries. The only hope of escape, Deputy Girar- 
dini said, was first the taking into camp by the 
Eadical party of the so-called "Reformist" Social- 
ists (like Bossolati and his friends, who now are so 
enthusiastically supporting the war Government 
with both pen and sword) and assuring the work- 
ing classes all the economic advantages compatible 
with the general situation; and then the union in 
the Government of the Radicals with the sincere 
Liberals so as to form a majority in the Chamber 
that would be both strong and stable. 

Decidedly pessimistic the tone of Signor Girar- 
dini's article. An Italy "going to the demnition 



258 The Spirit of Italy 

bow-wows !" I wonder how he feels about the na- 
tion now? I'm sure he had got rid of his attack of 
the "blue devils." 

Antonio Salandra is the subject of the second ar- 
ticle in this timely "Back Number." He had just 
come into power. The responsibility of the hour 
for him was great; but little did he dream of the 
vastly graver responsibility that a not very distant 
future had in store for him. At the beginning of 
this, the greatest epoch of his career, it is worth 
while recalling how his critic in the Revue, Gugli- 
elmo Settica, estimated him then: "The result of 
his labors, the perfect type of the self-made man," 
is Signor Settica's opening characterization. And 
then he quotes Silvio Spaventa, an eminent patriot 
and statesman, dead since 1893, who more than 
twenty years ago said of Italy's present Prime 
Minister : 

"Salandra is an intelligence lucid and cold which 
will make its way." 

Spaventa's judgment of men and things was not 
always sure, according to Signor Settica, but in 
this case he was not mistaken, for Salandra's bril- 
liant contribution to the daily and monthly jour- 
nals, in which the subjects treated ranged all the 
way from philosophy, political economy and finance 
to poetry, philology and politics, soon attracted 
general attention to him and he was elected to the 
Chamber from Luera, "crossing the threshold of 
the Assembly as a conqueror rather than as a nov- 
ice." 



The Spirit of Italy 259 

"The precocious nature of his mind," writes Sig- 
nor Settica, "made him take rank among those who 
in the Italian Chamber were lingering along the 
roadway of conservative liberalism, which in reality 
is only a form of negation. To be conservative, it 
is not to move; and in politics immobility is very 
close to retreat, so that those who do not want to 
go forward more often find themselves in accord 
with those who desire to take a step in arrear." 

Though not in sympathy with Salandra's "Con- 
servative Liberalism" a year and a half ago, Signor 
Settica cheerfully renders homage to the "liberality 
of his character and the sincerity of his opinions. 
One may dispute Salandra's political theories, but 
not contest the rectitude and consistency of him 
who seeks to render possible their application." 

However, concludes Signor Settica, Salandra had 
time to "evolute," so that in the formation! of his 
new Cabinet he could afford almost entirely to ig- 
nore the Giolitti element and find his substantial 
support on the "left" without hesitation. But, asks 
the reviewer, will he have the courage to cut loose 
entirely from his old political associations (other 
Conservative Liberals) in order to take hold and 
solve the great problems of which the country so 
long has been demanding the solution? 

"The hour of the proof by fire has sounded for 
him," concludes Signor Settica in unconscious 
prophecy, "and in the interest of Italy we ardently 
trust that he will come out of it victorious*" 

And so far Salandra — who it was said at first 



260 The Spirit of Italy 

was simply in power to wash the dishes for Giolitti 
— in the judgment of his fellow-countrymen and 
sympathizers with Italy the world over, has stood 
the test like a statesman who does his own thinking 
and as a patriot in whom there is no guile. 

"We must watch his course after the war is over, 
however," said a prominent Italian journalist of 
Democratic leanings to me. "He is the man for the 
present hour. It remains to be seen if he will meas- 
ure up to the most serious requirements when the 
nation is called upon to adjust itself to the new 
order of things. Should he manifest the slightest 
reactionary tendencies woe unto him ! Out he will 
go instantly ! This is the people's war and it is the 
democracy, pure and simple, which must profit by 
it. No reactionism ! no coquetHng with clericalism ! 
These will be our watchwords." 

Nevertheless, I have faith in Salandra. In the 
light of these very forecasts of a year* and a half 
ago one can judge the man of today and feel con- 
fident that he will in the future realize the best 
hopes of those who now trust in his wisdom and 
sincerity. 

But here is another eminent Italian of whom I 
find a most illuminating character study a few 
pages further on in this most up-to-date "Back 
Number" — Luigi Luzzatti. Little as he may be 
known to the American public, it is no exaggeration 
to say that this septuagenarian of Jewish origin 



The Spirit of Italy 261 

has one of the finest intellects and is one of the 
most broadminded patriots of the present time in 
Italy. I count it a misfortune not to have been able 
to meet him this summer. Many times a Cabinet 
officer, he once was Prime Minister, and it was dur- 
ing his rule that the basis of the plan to grant uni- 
versal suffrage to the nation was established. A 
believer in the democracy, ardent as Thomas Jeffer- 
son, he shares with our great commoner the spirit 
of optimism, which is such an inspiration to lofty 
ideals. Tolerance for intellect and conscience is his 
creed, according to Signor Nicolas Pascazio, the 
author of this contribution to the Revue d'ltalie — 
complete separation of Church from State. If re- 
ligion dares prescribe a limit to science, as it has at 
times, says Luzzatti, it retards the discovery of 
Truth; if science opposes the free expression of 
Faith by violence instead of persuasion, it might 
destroy all belief and thus hamper its salutary ef- 
fect upon the world. "Science without limits ; Faith 
with shackles !" so Luzzatti put it in six words. 

Two essential duties of the Italian Government, 
urged by Luzzatti years ago, will be just as ob- 
ligatory after the war: compulsory education and 
the protection of the small land owning interests 
by forestry. Indeed, his enthusiastic advocacy of 
forest conservation rivals Col. Boosevelt's. Italy, 
he contends, requires a "forestry conscience." The 
future prosperity of Southern Italy he often de- 



262 The Spirit of Italy 

clared depends upon the cutting up of the great 
estates into small farms and the systematic replant- 
ing of trees. 

Luzzatti, by the way, preached the doctrine that 
the suffrage is a right inherent with the function of 
the citizen conscious of his individual responsi- 
bility. As such, he says, it should be obligatory and 
the State should penalize those who neglect to vote 
and who thus treat with indifference, if not con- 
tempt, one of the noblest functions attributed to 
citizenship. Evidently Luzzatti hasn't a high opin- 
ion of the fellow who goes fishing on election day! 
He would be welcomed in feminist circles, too, in 
New York today, for he is inclined to believe that 
compulsory universal suffrage logically includes 
woman suffrage as honest, wise and equitable. Luz- 
zatti has been one of the foremost advocates of a 
divorce law in Italy, but so far without success. 

Socialism, which has more than a hundred Depu- 
ties in the Chamber, does not inspire Luzzatti as the 
arbiter of the destinies of humanity. The principle 
of equality and the right of man to develop his nat- 
ural aptitudes in his opinion constitute a heritage 
of humanity which includes the words of the Naza- 
rene, the Sermon on the Mount, and all the strug- 
gles of the Apostles and the martyrs for liberty. The 
masses of the people cannot live without religion 
by discarding the dogmas of the Church. 

Luzzatti's attitude toward the Triple Alliance, 
from the viewpoint of a year and a half ago, certain- 
ly has "actuality." "He is favorable to the alii- 



The Spirit of Italy 263 

ance, the advantages of which/' writes Signor Pas- 
cazio, "in our opinion are very doubtful, but which 
an endeavor has been made to adjust to the; eco- 
nomic interest of our people. But Signor Luzzatti 
admits that Italy has paid dearly for the equili- 
brium of forces. We are counting much" (how 
strange this sounds just now!) ; "we are counting 
much upon the commercial treaty with Germany, 
which will be concluded in 1916, to establish more 
harmonious relations between the political alliance 
and the economic alliance." 

The economic alliance that Luzzatti is advocating 
just now, I may remark in passing, is a commercial 
treaty, offensive and defensive, to be signed by all 
the Allies to protect themselves after the war 
against Germany and Austria "dumping" their 
wares on their erstwhile enemies and thus crushing 
them commercially, industrially and financially, if 
they fail to crush them by force of arms. 

About 50 per cent, of Germany's exports have 
heretofore gone to the Allies. Nearly 15 per cent, 
went to America. The problem for the United 
States to face is: How to protect ourselves from 
the "dumping" of that 50 per cent, (which had been 
going to the Allies) into our country and the South 
American republics, where we should dominate 
commercially and financially. Of course, Luzzatti's 
reply would be: "Come into our commercial alli- 
ance. We and our friends can buy more from you 
than the central empires." I'm not a statesman or 
a political economist. (Indeed, what is political 



264 The Spirit op Italy 

economy today? Who is an authority? Are the 
old text books of further use to any one but the rag 
man?) I simply pose the proposition for some one 
competent to discuss it. 

You remember that during Italy's war in Lybia 
relations with France were, to put it mildly, rather 
"strained." It was not popular in Italy to be 
"francophile." 

Luzzatti, however, was accused by his enemies 
of inopportune friendliness for the French. In 
Signor Pascazio's opinion the criticisms were un- 
just and he takes occasion to quote from Luzzatti's 
speech at a Zola memorial meeting as follows : 

"Petty questions, petty interests, inflated and dis- 
torted, of underhand designs might sometimes sep- 
arate the two Latin nations ; but the common genius 
of letters, art and science has always reunited them 
and made them rise together to the highest summits 
of the ideal, where in the communion of wellbeing 
France and Italy feel that they are called to repre- 
sent and organize a society more humane and more 
just. The necessary difference of religion, politics 
and economic conditions, consecrated by the guar- 
antee of public justice, leads to rivalries fertile in 
mutual aid and to sublime emulations in the search 
after the Truth, for the peaceful conquest of a more 
brilliant civilization." 

Such, says Signor Pascazio, are Luzzatti's "fran- 
cophile" sentiments. How can any Italian find 



The Spirit of Italy 265 

fault with them ? And the true lover of Italy, even 
a foreigner, echoes : "How?" 

Pope Pius X. was ill in the days when this "Back 
Number" was being edited. The question of his suc- 
cessor had its "actuality." An anonymous "Abbe 
X." contributes an article on the subject in which 
especially he discusses the probability of the elec- 
tion of a Pope not Italian. The North American 
Catholics, he says, have supported the idea "with 
great favor." "And you know," he adds, "that when 
the Yankees get an idea in their heads they do not 
let it go no matter how paradoxical it may appear, 
nor surrender it no matter what sacrifice it requires 
to realize it." 

Then "Abbe X." goes on to demonstrate the im- 
probability of any but an Italian being chosen, stat- 
ing that the idea was not being taken seriously in 
Vatican circles. In view of the many stories afloat 
as to the sympathies of the Holy See in the present 
war it is worth while noting the anonymous Abbe's 
remarks regarding the "neutrality" of cardinals. 

"As to the neutrality of the Italian prelates," 
says he, "there are more than one who, far from be- 
ing cosmopolite, profess Italian opinions, most Ital- 
ian, indeed, and are anything but inimical to the 
Italian Government, for which they work openly. 
And one might say the same about the prelates of 
other countries, who, although attached to the su- 
perior interest of the Church are not less devoted to 



266 The Spirit op Italy 

their fatherlands. It should be so, for if faith were 
a sentiment destructive of patriotism it would de- 
serve condemnation." 

The Abbe concludes that, although theoretically 
the monopoly which the Italian cardinals seem to 
enjoy is unjust yet in effect it is best for the 
Church's interest. In his opinion the election of a 
non-Italian Pope would result in an inevitable out- 
burst of schism and perhaps the election of one or 
many anti-popes. 

"If the tiara should pass into other hands than 
those who have held it through many centuries," 
declares the Abbe, "it would break into who knows 
how many fragments, and the day when it would 
adorn the brow of a foreign prelate would mark the 
end of Catholic unity. So say the Italian prelates, 
and I think they are right, even if their views are 
not always inspired solely by the interest of the 
faith." 

One more bit of "actuality" from the "Back Num- 
ber." A violent campaign had just been started by 
the Cologne Gazette and taken up by other influen- 
tial German newspapers against Eussia. To it Bus- 
sia responded : 

"We do not know what you want, but if you are 
looking for a quarrel, know that Kussia is ready, 
ultra ready." 

This, coming from the Russian Minister of War, 



The Spirit op Italy 267 

intensified the German anti-Russian newspaper 
campaign. Whereupon an article, evidently in- 
spired, appeared in the Petrograd (it was St. Pet- 
ersburg in those far off days!) Novoe Yreyma, in 
which a "personage," after saying that every one 
was discussing the crisis of armaments, adds that 
all the European States, without exception, are op- 
posed to war; that their only object in arming is 
to assure peace. But the question arises, said he, 
when are these armaments going to stop? And 
the Novoe Yreyma writer concludes that the best 
guarantee of peace would be — an alliance between 
Russia, France, Germany and England, such a 
combination furnishing a basis for the cutting up 
of Austro-Hungary after the death of Francis 
Joseph. 

The wiping out of the Hapsburg monarchy, it 
was suggested by the Russian newspaper, would be 
fatal to the Triple Alliance, and, thanks to this com- 
bination, Germany could annex the German prov- 
inces of Austria and give back Alsace and Lorraine 
to her western neighbors. On her side Russia would 
get Galicia, while Hungary and Bohemia would 
become independent States. "As for Italy," says 
the Russian journal, "she would find compensation 
elsewhere from the loss of her alliance with Austria, 
which is now a greater load upon her than ever." 

This article, the Revue tells us, caused a big sen- 
sation in St. Petersburg, where it was intimated 
that the scheme was "less fantastic than it might 
seem." Germany, it was hinted, was no longer in 



268 The Spirit of Italy 

condition to continue her course of armament 
against the Triple Entente, either on land or on 
sea. Necessarily then she would have to endeavor 
to get out of this "blind alley." "And," said the 
Eussian commentator, "she has nothing else reason- 
able to do but break with the existing system of 
alliances, abandon her pretensions with regard to 
French territory and take instead the German prov- 
inces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

"Thus," adds the unknown Russian journalist, 
"this new entente entered into by Germany would 
save the peoples of the old continent from the great- 
est calamity that has ever threatened their civili- 
zation." 

That sentence was written a year and a half ago 
— before the tragedy of Sarajevo. The name of the 
man who wrote it is unknown, but it deserves to 
be put on record. 

Rereading his prophetic words, I close my "Back 
Number." Fire Island light is off the starboard 
bow. I wonder how the Statue of Liberty will look 
tomorrow morning, and what has happened at 
Washington since I learned two weeks ago that 
Ambassador Dumba had "received his walking 
papers." 



LRBAglb 



\ 



